


To The North

by Schistosity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Murder Mystery, POV Caleb Widogast, POV Jester Lavorre, because episode 77 had me going absolutely rabid, i'm jumping on liam's throwaway suggestion to teleport to blumenthal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2020-10-13 15:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 64,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20584748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schistosity/pseuds/Schistosity
Summary: In another world, the party follow through on their plan to teleport to Blumenthal instead of Nicodranas. What they initially intend to be a simple supply run instead turns into a deadly mystery in Caleb’s hometown -- one that uncovers dark rumours, a violent legend, and old secrets kept long hidden.





	1. across the country i remember

**Author's Note:**

> [Stefon voice] This fic has everything: Murder! Idyllic German villages! Tragic backstories! Scooby-Doo level mysteries! Gratuitous flower imagery! 
> 
> Because Liam suggested Essek take them to Blumenthal and that's too good of a what-if to pass up! I'm boutta get my dirty little hands ALL over homeboy's hometown. This fic is a canon divergent from Episode 77 onwards!
> 
> [My playlist for this fic can be found here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/46cxhuCmeNaIbqaWPi3J8w?si=9GX-eRDjS4WARbEj-TZa0A)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There are the mountains where I lived. The path_   
_Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber,_   
_The stumps are twisted by the tempests’ wrath._   
_But that I knew these places are my own,_   
_I’d ask how came such wretchedness to cumber_   
_The earth, and I to people it alone._
> 
> _It rains across the country I remember._
> 
> — "Mnemosyne", Trumbull Stickney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: There is a wee little self-harm/suicide scene in this chapter! It happens in a dream sequence right at the end, so if you’re not too keen on reading it just skip past the italics section that starts with “You think I need magic to kill you?” and pick back up again when it changes back to normal text. :)

They appear in a field of wildflowers, the milky light of dawn blooming in the sky above them.

The landing is shaky and the rain-slicked mud underfoot sends several of them sprawling as the teleportation completes—Caleb included. He lands on his hands and knees, tremors shooting through his joints at the jolting impact. He inhales sharply, gulping in a mouthful of cold air and petrichor.

There’s a hand on his shoulder and words being spoken somewhere close to him.

“—must leave you,” the Shadowhand is saying. “I will not be able to retrieve you either—that is a bridge for you all to cross on your own. Widogast?”

Caleb breathes in, pulls his hands from the mud—_presentable, be presentable_—and rocks back into a kneeling position. He faces Essek, focuses on the point just below his right eye, and nods shortly.

“I wish you good luck. Truly.”

Caleb nods again. Any words he may have at one point had are too far down and too trapped in his throat to be useful here. Instead, he turns his attention to the earth beneath him. There are little white flowers in the imprints left by his hands, crushed and muddied by his abrupt presence. 

He spends a long time looking at them. When he looks back, Essek is gone. 

The field they’ve appeared in sits at the edge of a forest, nestled into a patch of thinning pine trees on the gentle slopes of some small hill. Wildflowers and grasses that rise to the level of his eyes spread out in all directions, disappearing down into the darkened valley below them. 

“Where are we heading, Caleb?” He realises the hand on his shoulder belongs to Beau. She’s looking down at him with those hawk-like eyes, the ones he has only recently learned to recognise kindness in. There’s kindness in them now; It helps pull the voice from his locked throat. 

“The valley,” he murmurs. “But we should, uh– We should wait until the sun is up, at least. They will be suspicious if we arrive too early in the day.”

Beau nods and helps haul him to his feet. As the rest of the Nein stand and settle into waiting, Caleb looks down at the little white flowers broken underfoot, beaten down into the dirt. 

“What’s our plan?” Beau says, ever the pragmatist. “We’ve got a goal, but we need to think in the short term.” 

“We can get a cart and some horses in town, maybe even some potions,” Fjord says, and then he looks to Caleb. “Will that be possible?”

“Yes,” Caleb says. “Provided they have beasts of burden to spare they will probably be happy to sell them to us. There won’t be much of a, uh, _ magic _selection, but there may be a few places where we could attempt to find a potion or two. The temple, perhaps.” 

“A temple would sell us potions?” Fjord asks, light bewilderment playing on his voice. 

“People in poor towns will sell just about anything,” Beau explains brusquely, and though Caleb isn’t looking at her he hears her squawk of indignation as someone drives an elbow into her. 

The group bicker back and forth over nothing for a little while and Caleb lets it fizzle to background noise. He summons Frumpkin, letting the little cat curl around his ankles and sniff at the new, exciting plants. 

He thinks of the old Frumpkin, the little lady-cat that had been born under their stoop when he was four. She had protected their chickens from stoats and tried to protect them from foxes. She had been much fluffier than the current Frumpkin, with big green eyes and a tuft of white fur under her chin like a beard. 

“Don’t worry,” he mutters to Frumpkin, hearing the little meow at his ankles and snapping the familiar quickly to his shoulder. “You are a very good cat.”

Suddenly, there is a low whistle from behind him, and the group turn to Caduceus, who nods towards the valley floor. “Now isn’t that something.”

Caleb’s breath hitches in his throat.

The dawn sun crests the distant mountains and all at once the dark valley before them is illuminated in vibrant, debilitating familiarity. The distant peaks that border the valley seem to scrape the sky thin; snowy ridges, stained red by the dawn sun, carving the low clouds into tendrils as they drift over the slumbering village at their base. 

The sun rises, and the village of Blumenthal glows in honey-soft morning light. Thin plumes of chimney smoke rise from little thatched roofs and the sun glints along the silver waters of the river. And all around it, spilling down from every treeline to the edges of every milled field, are _ acres upon acres _ of blooming wildflowers. They are impossibly bright and vibrant, even from a distance, colouring the valley in all shades of the spectrum. 

_ Bren is five, chasing a cat through the lupine fields beyond his back garden, weaving through the tall pillars of purple and pink and blue, the soft buzz of working bees humming in his ears like the sun on his skin. _

Caleb tastes the sudden brine of his own tears as they quietly meet the corners of his mouth. Unbidden, but not unexpected.

“It’s _ beautiful_,” Jester says from behind him, hushed and a little surprised. “Oh, Caleb! You never said your hometown was so pretty!” 

“_J-ja_,” he musters the word with some difficulty, forcing it past the burgeoning tears. “It is very pretty.”

A small, clawed hand finds his and he looks down, wiping his face discreetly with his sleeve. Nott presses one of the little white flowers into his hand. Its petals are pristine and white, the colour of freshly fallen snow. 

“They’re nice flowers,” she says quietly. “What are they?”

“_Edelweiss_,” he murmurs, running a finger over one of the soft petals. 

“Ay-del-vice?” Nott smiles. “I like them.”

Nott had told him once that halflings have superstitions surrounding flowers. They believe it is good luck to weave them into their hair and carry them in their pockets. Caleb slowly tucks the blossom into his coat.

“Shall we go?” He says, forcing a smile. 

“Let’s go,” she agrees. 

* * *

Their hike into the valley is a slow one. They spend most of it in relative silence, focusing on picking their way down sheep trails made slick and slippery by the previous night’s rain. The sun continues to rise as they descend to the valley floor, moving slowly from thin pine forests to more open fields, all the while accompanied by a constant slew of vibrant wildflowers and birdsong. 

It’s Fjord that breaks the silence, swearing loudly as he almost trips into a hidden ditch. “I thought the Zemni Fields would be more… you know… _ field-y? _Less _ hill-y_?”

“It is a very diverse region,” Caleb says. “There are more fields father north, it is just, uh, steep here.” 

“The valley is wide though,” Nott muses, clambering nimbly over a piece of loose rock on the trail. “You have a lot of farms?”

Caleb nods. 

“What did you farm? Not cereals, I’d assume? You don’t have quite enough room.” Nott trots close to Caleb’s heels. The questions are simple, but they once again jarringly remind the group what background their sticky-fingered goblin friend actually comes from.

“We raised livestock for the most part.” Caleb likes this line of questioning because it’s not really _ questioning _. If he takes a deep breath and centers himself, he can almost pretend he’s just answering questions about a completely different town, one he has no connection to. He wonders if Nott is doing it on purpose. “Sheep and goats mainly. Chickens, too.”

“Aw, _ really_?! Animals are _ stinky_!” Jester exclaims. “You have so many pretty flowers to do things with instead!”

Caleb looks back to see her waving her arms, clutching fistfuls of wild lavender she’d presumably yanked out during their trek. She jogs up to his side, almost losing her balance on the incline, and shoves one of the bundles under his nose for him to smell.

“Like my mama’s perfume!” She says, delight dripping from every word. “This is beautiful, Caleb!”

“What do you suggest?” He says with a chuckle. “Should we make perfume? Or tea?”

She flashes a grin and falls back into step with Fjord. “I think we should make tea with these. Wouldn’t that be nice, Caduceus?”

“I think it would,” Caduceus chuckles, rolling some kind of purple blossom between his fingers. “There are a lot of interesting possibilities here.”

The conversation ebbs after that, bouncing from silence to vague planning to facts about the area to meaningless conversation. By the time the Mighty Nein reach the valley floor they are no longer decked out in their regular attire. Caleb casts Seeming as soon as the windows of the outer homesteads become visible, transforming a group of eccentric looking vagabonds into something more acceptable by northern standards.

He tries to keep them as close to their real physical appearances as possible, preserving facial structures and body types where he can (though Caduceus is an entirely different ordeal). The result is the highly surreal image of human, half-elf, and halfling versions of his friends wearing the most ordinary travelling clothes he could muster.

He also disguises himself, turning his distinctive hair a plain, dark brown along with his eyes and giving himself the pointed ears of a half-elf. I might as well, he tells the others. He can’t tell them it’s because he looks far too much like his father to be safe from recognition.

They also decide on a cover story on the way down. They are to be sellswords heading back south after a job in the north. They had unfortunately been separated from their caravan, and they are merely passing through Blumenthal to pick up transport.

“Is there anything else we should know before we arrive?” Fjord asks as they finally reach one of the packed dirt roads leading into the town. It’s still a ways off, but the roofs of the outer farmhouses are now clearly visible. 

“It would be best not to mention the name Bren, or Ermendrud, for that matter.” Caleb begins to drift forward to the front of the pack, readying himself for the inevitable Zemnian greetings he’ll have to dish out as they enter the town. He just keeps talking and it’s because of that lack of focus that he says: “I have no living family here and I have not been back in some time… a return would just complicate things.”

“No living family?” Jester repeats in her high, soft voice. Caleb’s heart stutters nervously, realising what he’s said.

“Uh, no,” he mutters, mind whirling as he attempts to salvage the conversation. “Not anymore.”

“You… you’ve spoken about your father before.” Fjord looks away in discomfort, speaking carefully. “In the, uh, past tense. I assumed he had passed away… but…”

Caleb wants to tear his hair out. He had spoken to Fjord about his father, briefly, on the boat. But that had been months ago, and he hadn’t expected the man to _remember_, let alone bring it up now.

“My parents are dead,” he says, the truth like copper in his mouth. “Both of them. No siblings or anything, so…”

“Oh. I’m very sorry, Caleb,” Jester says sweetly, just as Fjord says, “Oh. Do you mind if I ask how?”

It’s as if all the air has suddenly vacated the space. Caleb sucks in a breath and finds no purchase. His mind reels, scrambling for something to hold onto before the moment swallows him whole. How? _How?_ Oh, he could tell him _how_. He could tell Fjord how his fingers had blackened and cracked and flames leapt from his palms, needing no tinder to set ablaze the house he had been born in along with the people who had raised him.

He’s back in a cramped inn room in Zadash, bandaged hands clasped between his knees to keep from shaking, spilling his guts to a woman he’s known for months and a woman he’s known for days. In the inn in Zadash he tells them the truth, but he doesn’t tell them how. He could, though. He could tell them _how_. How _the burning image on his hands that manifests from the casting of magical fire dissipates as quickly as it appears, but the cracking, smoking ruin of his parents flesh is real and remains and remains and remains and his mother is screaming and_—

“_Jeezus_, Fjord!” Beau shouts before anyone else can speak, snapping Caleb violently from his spiral. She punches Fjord in the arm _ hard _ and his cry of pain sends a flock of magpies screeching into the air from a nearby tree. “I know your parent experience is pretty fuckin’ _ non-existent _but you can’t just ask people how their fuckin’ _ folks _died, man!”

Caleb would have _ kissed _Beau right then and there if he didn’t know such an attempt would end with his immediate and painful death. 

In the wake of the outburst, Fjord abandons whatever remark he was about to make and whips around to face Beau. “Was that… was that a fucking orphan joke?” 

“So what if it was?” Beau says, eyes narrowing. “Don’t be a fucking shithead.”

Fjord turns back to Caleb with an apologetic look and all Caleb can do is stand there and try not to gape like a fish, blinking the creeping tendrils of hazy history from his mind. It only half works. “Sorry, Caleb,” Fjord says. “That was insensitive of me.”

“Th-that’s okay, Fjord,” he says, finding his voice again. “I, um… I would prefer not to talk about it."

There’s a beat of awkward, excruciating silence before Caleb pushes forward, clearing his throat. “Ah, so, anyway. The older people here will know that I went to the academy. It’s better that they do not recognise me.”

“You think that the information could possibly find its way to Trent?” Caduceus posits. Caleb hadn’t been thinking that, but he decides to go with it. 

“Perhaps. This is not a well-connected town but it’s better to be a stranger than a familiar face.”

He doesn’t miss the suspicious glance from Beau or the worried stare from Nott. They know he’s not giving the real reason for his wariness. Sure, he could choose to be worried about the information of Bren’s return to Blumenthal eventually trickling its way to a more populated settlement in the coming weeks or months, but the true cause of his hesitation is in regards to the people of Blumenthal themselves. 

Because he’s not actually sure what the cover story for that night was, or if there had even been one at all. Three families, murdered in one night, _ had _ to have been noticed by a town this small. The subsequent disappearances of their children must have at least seemed _ odd _. Had the townsfolk managed to put two and two together? Was Bren Aldric Ermendrud recognized as the murderer he was? Or, by some twist of horrible fate, had his crimes been covered up?

He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know the answer. The safest option was to not bring it up at all; To get in and out of Blumenthal without the name Ermendrud passing a single pair of lips. 

“So we just use our names as they are,” Fjord says with the tone of a decision being made. “That’s cool. We’ll be in and out in a flash.”

“Our business might not be so speedy,” Caleb says. “Most people here do not speak Common very well. You will need me to translate for you.” 

“No one?” Jester asks. Caleb shrugs. 

“The innkeeper might, as well as the clergy and any stationed crownsguard here, but not many others. This is not a transit town; they do not see enough outsiders to necessitate it.” 

“Are they going to be suspicious of a large group?” Fjord asks.

Caleb hums thoughtfully. “Yes, but being suspicious is more or less the worst thing they can do.”

“This is… _ really _fucking rural, man,” Beau muses. 

“I think it’s nice,” Caduceus hums, running his hands through the roadside flowers. “It reminds me of the Blooming Grove.”

“Without the bone bears,” Nott says. “Those were—”

_ “Guten morgen!” _

The Nein almost jump out of their respective skins as an unfamiliar voice calls out to them from very close by. They all turn at once, greeted by the slowly approaching form of a young human man in overalls, emerging from the adjacent field with a yapping dog at his feet. 

Beau elbows Caleb roughly, sending him staggering forwards. “Your move, Widogast,” she hisses. “Work that stuffy Zemnian charm of yours.”

_ “M-morgen...” _ Caleb stutters, raising his hand in greeting. _ “Wie gehts?” _

The man gives a shrug that probably means things could be worse and finishes his approach, stepping onto the road next to the group. He dusts his hands off on his trousers. Caleb guesses by the dog and the get-up he must be a farmhand. “What brings you to Blumenthal, friend?”

“We’re on business from the north,” Caleb says. He swiftly finds his rhythm, the lies coming so much easier in Zemnian. “We’ve been separated from our caravan, so we’re just passing through to organise transport.”

The man takes this in with a thoughtful look. “You looking for horses then?”

“Yes. And a cart, if that’s possible?”

The man’s dog barks at Frumpkin, who hisses from his perch on Caleb’s shoulder. The man whistles sharply and the dog goes silent. Caleb narrows his eyes at it, mentally daring it to try that shit again.

“You should check in with Hans Mündermann,” says the man. “He lives down by the west sheep station.”

“You work for him?”

“Sure do,” the man says. “We’re in the middle of moving the ewes away from the south fields.” 

Caleb hums softly. “That sounds like big work.”

“It is, sir,” the man sighs. “Work I shouldn’t get too distracted from, I think!”

Seeing the plainly laid-out escape from the conversation, Caleb eagerly jumps on it. “Oh, well don’t let us keep you.”

“No, no! Don’t let me keep you either. Good luck with your horses.”

He whistles again for the dog to follow and turns back to the field, shooting a quick wink at Jester as he does so. Beau’s jaw drops. She looks offended. 

“Did he just wink at Jester?”

“So what if he did, Beau!” Jester cries, tossing her hair dramatically. “I am _ very _pretty, I’ll have you know!”

“What did he say?” Nott asks, cutting off any further bickering from Beau. 

“He knows a man who has horses to sell,” Caleb says. “I do not know the name but I know the farm, so we can head there immediately.”

Fjord gives a low, impressed whistle. “That was easy.”

Beau grunts. “_Too _ easy…?” She doesn’t quite sound like she believes her own suspicion. 

Fjord waves a hand and smiles. “You know what they say about gift horses…”

Caduceus chimes in from behind them all. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to pay for these ones, Fjord.”

“That’s… nevermind.”

* * *

The Nein continue forward. With a direction now solidly in his mind, Caleb finds he can move a little faster. Having an excuse to ignore the familiar buildings that rise around them in greater frequency as they approach the town square means he doesn’t have to linger at them.

Caleb takes a moment to point out some of the more interesting attractions, of which there are only three; The inn, named the Fair Lady, is a squat half-timbered public house which sits squarely on the town square; The town hall is only a few blocks down, barely more than a house itself, decorated with the crest of the Empire to differentiate it from the little residential premises that surround it; Finally, the temple of Erathis, the pale steeple of which rises high above any other building in the town. A handful of worshippers stream in and out from its open doors, but for the most part, the town is relatively quiet with most people working the morning away in the fields. 

Jester tugs on his sleeve as they pass the temple. 

“Don’t worry Cay-leb,” she says in her sing-song voice. “I would normally go fuck with that temple really bad but I won’t do it because this is your home, okay?”

“Okay?”

She pats him on the arm and sidles up next to Nott. 

“Did you worship the Lawbearer, Caleb?” Caduceus’s low voice appears to the other side of him. Caleb is always impressed by how quiet the firbolg can be went he wants to. 

“Uh, no,” Caleb says. “Not really. We would go on holidays, I suppose, but not regularly.”

“Do you worship any Gods?” Caduceus inquires. “I know that’s an out of place question, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever asked it.”

Caleb’s thoughts go back to the asylum, to the woman who had healed him with crescent moons clenched tightly in her hands. To the confiscated symbols in the buried temple in Labenda. To the small symbol of the Archheart that has sat in the bottom of his pack ever since.

No. He doesn’t think he does.

“No,” he says. “I am not one for organised religions… or, uh, organisations in general, I suppose.”

“That’s fair,” Caduceus chuckles. “Good to know.”

They cross the river halfway through town, and Jester and Nott spend a moment making a game of dropping sticks into the silvery water on one side of the bridge and watching them appear on the other.

They continue through the town, building thinning as they approach the northern farmlands. Fields of grazing sheep and goats fan out on either side of the small dirt road Caleb leads them down, munching on long grasses and small yellow flowers. They travel for what feels like an hour but probably isn’t, the hot sun baking the backs of their necks as it approaches its peak.

Eventually they reach the farm and approach one of the barns; a flat-topped building nestled between the road and a wide field of maze-like fences. Beyond the workshed is a large farmhouse that Caleb vaguely remembers, though he can’t quite recall the name of its owner. What immediately catches all of their attention, however, are the three horses grazing in the field beyond the house. 

“Jackpot,” Nott says. 

Hans Mündermann, owner of the farm and the horses, is a rotund man a little older than Caleb and far taller. It takes a moment for Caleb to remember him. He had been much thinner, in Caleb’s time in Blumenthal, and had avoided the town’s youth as much as possible. He’d always had an aura of smug superiority, and Caleb isn’t surprised to see it hasn’t left him. 

“400 for the horses. 20 for the cart.”

“The fuck!?” Beau squawks, apparently knowing enough Zemnian to recognize the numbers. “Did he just fucking say what I think he said?”

Caleb ignores her. “If you think you can take advantage of us because we are out of towners, Herr Mündermann, you will be sorely disappointed. The going rate in the south is 75 per beast.”

“This isn’t the south. I have a family to feed,” Hans drawls, folding his arms across his chest. “I need these horses to herd. If you want to take them off my hands, you’d best be willing to pay for the trouble you’re causing me.”

Caleb presses his lips into a thin line, biting down the curse-laden retort bubbling in his throat. He turns back to the group, who are looking at him with varying levels of comprehension and confusion.

“300 for the horses,” he says finally, turning back to Hans and schooling his expression into something more neutral.

“350 or I walk.” Hans leans forward. “And so will you.”

Caleb frowns. Hans smiles. “Fine.”

“I’ll drop them off after the afternoon shift is done.”

* * *

With their pockets considerably lighter and their moods much lower, the Nein wander their way back into town. 

“Well, shit,” Jester says, looking glum for the first time that day. “We probably need to sell those gems or something. We’re gonna run out of money before we get to Trent’s dumb house and I bet there will be at least one really good bakery on the way!”

“I thought you wanted to keep those for tattoos?” Fjord asks, chewing on a piece of plucked grass. 

“Maybe! But I also want pastries,” Jester says. “And don’t chew on grass, Fjord! What if the Wildmother gets mad?” 

“You’ve been beheading lavender all day, Jessie, if she’s going to get mad at anyone it’ll be you.”

Caleb once again lets the conversation fade into the distance and falls into his thoughts. By the time they reach the town proper again, his mind is buzzing with a single, burning desire. One he wants to shake but can’t. 

“I have something I would like to go check on by myself,” he says suddenly, stopping in his tracks. “I will meet you back at the inn. I won’t be more than an hour.”

“Ooh! Secret Caleb Backstory Stuff?”

Caleb cracks a reluctant smile. “Nothing so interesting as that, Jester, but it’s something I would like to do alone.”

“I’m cool with splitting up for a while,” Beau says. “But you’re kind of our translator here.”

Caleb takes a moment and digs a little clay ziggurat out of his illusory coat pockets and holds it in front of him. “There’s a spell I can cast to help with that, but it only lasts for an hour,” he says. “I wanted to save it in case of an emergency but we can use it now.”

“What is it?” Fjord asks, peering closely at the model.

“_Tongues_. It will let you speak to people.”

Fjord’s eyes widen. “Alright. Hit me.”

Caleb checks that the coast is clear and steps closer to Fjord. He whispers the arcane words under his breath, feeling the invisible fabric of his magic shift and buzz in synchronicity with his motions. He brings the ziggurat up, balancing it in the palm of his hand, and presses it to his lips, tasting the smoky tang of his own magic. He exhales softly and the threads tug forward, crawling unseen through the air until they connect with Fjord. Caleb feels his ears pop. 

_“Hat es funktioniert?”_ He asks.

“Y-yeah,” Fjord blinks. “I think so, wait, what?

Caleb gives him a thumbs up. “Good. Who else wants it?”

In the end, only Jester and Beau refuse Tongues. Jester, because she is having far too much fun simply trying to guess what people are saying and Beau, because “you should save your spells, you never know what could happen.”

“We are in the sticks, Beauregard.”

“Trostenwald was the sticks! Look at what happened there!”

He doesn’t quite agree that Trostenwald was the sticks, given that it actually had more than ten streets in the whole town, but in the end he doesn’t force it. He walks his friends back to the town square and splits off, giving a curt wave goodbye before falling into a quiet, solitary trek back towards the southern fields. 

The Ermendrud house sits back from the main farm roads on the south side of Blumenthal, tucked into the edge of one of the valley forests in a thin grove of elm trees by one of the small tributaries that run from the surrounding hills into the main river. It had by no means ever been considered an idyllic location; the elm trees would block the afternoon sun year-round, and especially heavy rain would cause the little stream to breach its banks and flow into the low gardens of the property. 

But it had been a good place for a family—cozy and safe, with enough room for chickens and ducks and a vegetable garden, and a sprawling field of lupines that disappeared into the pines beyond.

It had been a good place to raise a child. A good place to grow up. 

It’s a ten minute walk from the town proper to the branching lane that leads to the Ermendrud house. They had passed it on the way in, but Caleb had done his best to ignore it. The walk is much shorter than Caleb remembers, but he supposes he is just… larger; he has travelled much too far by comparison to still call the route he walked every day as a boy _ long_. 

Caleb is not alone. As he turns off onto the familiar country lane he becomes aware of Nott, slinking in the tall grasses beside him. He gets the feeling he only knows she’s there because she’s letting him, but he finds himself appreciating it more than he expected; she’s giving him privacy without leaving him alone. 

It’s a further ten minute walk into a slowly thickening patch of trees before he reaches the end of the road. The hard-packed earth of the road abruptly stops in the face of a small picket fence and a rusted weathervane sits askew on the post of the old gateway. The little gate Bren had helped his father paint is still there. Its white paint, once fresh and bright, is faded with time and neglect, rusted and entwined with the natural snares of long grass and weeds. Caleb tugs it open and the hinges scream. 

The Ermendrud house is a jungle built on bones. The aching, blackened skeleton of his childhood home stands stark against the surrounding greenery like a physical corpse, choked at every corner by the crawling fingers of overgrown grasses, wildflowers, and ivy. Like the hands of the earth itself, the vegetation seems to be trying to reclaim the burnt wreckage—to swallow it whole.

But it’s still there.

Sunshine filters through the leaves of the trees, dappling the ruin of his making with golden light. A soft breeze rustles the grasses and pulls gently at the tawny hair in Caleb’s eyes. It is too soft. Too quiet.

“This was your home?” He knows Nott is behind him, but the voice still makes him jump. 

Nott is standing in the open gate, concern plain on her disguised face. He had tried to make her look like a generic halfling when he cast Seeming_— _any halfling would have done the trick—but it had been hard not to weave her specific mask in the shape of Veth. She looked up at him now, with her round face and big brown eyes full of sorrow, and he felt his heart wrench in his chest. There is a single edelweiss blossom tucked behind her ear. 

“Yes,” he says, chiding himself silently for how weak his voice sounds. “It was.” 

“It must have been lovely,” she says with a smile, as if she can’t see the festering, cracking corpse of Caleb’s home amongst the wild nature. 

He swallows, and says nothing. 

“Do you want me to give you a minute, Caleb?” She asks, accommodating to a fault. “I can wait down the road a little?”

“No,” he says softly. “I’d like it if you stayed.”

There are all manner of wildflowers growing from what is, essentially, his parents’ gravesite. It makes him think of the Blooming Grove, in a morbid sort of way. He wonders what kind of tea Caduceus could make from his parents’ ashes. He wonders what it would do to him. 

The most dominant flowers in the new garden are not lupines, like he had expected, though the familiar pillars of tiny petals fan out in all directions in their usual cool colours—No. The most dominant flower is one Caleb doesn’t recognize; a pale pink blossom, soft and unassuming, tall and simple. It spreads out across the path that leads to the front door, spiralling and threading through the cracks in the broken stonework; an intruder in a broken home. 

They stand in silence for a long time, just staring, letting ambient birdsong fill the quiet. 

“You know… This kinda reminds me of the last time we were in Felderwin,” Nott says. 

“Ha,” Caleb laughs without humour, remembering the burnt husk of the Brenatto Apothecary. Remembers watching Nott dig through the rubble on her hands and knees—desperate and fearful. “Deja vu?”

Nott winces and smiles. “Yeah.” 

The gate creaks behind them and they both spin around. Caleb’s hands are already jammed in his component pouch and he hears the click of Nott’s crossbow cocking, but the face they find at the gate is a familiar one. 

“Woah, woah, _ woah!_” Beau cries, raising her hands. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on ya! _ Fuck_, guys... don’t fuckin’ jump the gun like that!”

“Then don’t sneak up on us!” Nott hisses, angrily holstering her crossbow. Beau rolls her eyes and steps through the gate, eyes on Caleb. 

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she says, her voice an odd kind of soft he’s only heard a few times. 

“I am alright, Beauregard.”

Caleb meets Beau’s eyes for a second. He’d disguised her, like the others, as minimally as he could so as to preserve recognition. He’d made her look like a more working class version of herself—wind-chapped skin, tightly braided hair, and a slightly softer physique—but despite a plethora of changes to make her look more plain her eyes are still their piercing, hawkish selves. They still dig into him like knives. 

He watches her focus slip from his face to the space behind him. He watches the direction of her gaze flick up and down, left and right, tracing the broken lines of a once-sturdy home, finally filling in the visual gaps in a story she’d heard months prior. 

When she finally looks at him again he doesn’t look away. “This is it, huh?” 

“Yes." His voice is steady. 

Beau smiles wryly, leaning on her staff. “You really did a number on it, didn’t you?”

Nott gasps. “_Beauregard_.”

“What!?”

“Don’t be fucking _ rude_!”

Caleb sighs. “She is right, Nott.” 

Nott huffs and turns around, hand finding Caleb’s once more. Beau meanders up to Caleb’s other side, placing a hand on his shoulder. _ Sorry_, the hand seems to say. He gives Beau a weak smile. 

“I can see how this would have been nice,” she says awkwardly. “Like, growing up here with all the trees and flowers and stuff. Before it was all, uh, burned down, though.” 

“Maybe you should stop while you're ahead, Beauregard.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

That almost makes him laugh. She tries—oh _ Gods _does she try—and at some point that had stopped being awful and had started being something he loves about her. She tries very hard and he doesn’t deserve it at all, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be thankful for it.

“I don’t know much about farms or whatever,” Beau says, changing track to a less emotional line of thinking. “But I’m surprised they haven’t cleared the lot out… built a new house or something. Is that weird?”

Nott hums in vague agreement. “Yeah, I suppose. We’d clear it out if this was Felderwin but… you know, it’s, uh, _ not_.”

“I think it would have been worse if they had,” Caleb says, so strained and soft he wonders if the others hear him. “It would have been like it never happened.”

He starts forward without warning, breaking away from the two women to begin picking his way through the weed-choked, overgrown garden. He approaches the skeleton of the old door frame and pushes through. 

(That’s always been something about burned buildings Caleb has noticed—it’s the doors that survive; The doors, stairs, chimney stacks and basements. They’re built stronger than the rest of the house is.)

Not much remains of his childhood home as he walks through it. It’s overgrown and broken, ivy and grass and unfamiliar pink wildflowers weaving their way through any crack or hole in the burnt floorboards and surviving fixtures. The whole first floor remains, but only the barest scraps of the second floor still loom above, led to by a crumbling, half-withered staircase. He picks his way gingerly through it all, not wanting to ruin this place more than he already has. 

He walks past the crumbling bannister of the stairs that used to lead to the top floor, where his little bedroom used to lay wedged between the chimney stack and his parents’ room. The warmest room in the house, given to him by two people who would rather freeze than see their child shiver. He moves through the half collapsed doorway to the sitting room, running his hand over the faint grooves in the doorframe where his father would notch his height every year. 

He kneels in front of the ruins of the fireplace, where he and his parents would wrap themselves up in furs and sit in front of during the evenings, reading stories until he fell asleep. He sits there now, alone, for the first time in over sixteen years. 

_ “Es tut mir leid,” _ he whispers, not really knowing why. It’s not enough. It will never, ever be enough. 

Silence answers him. Then:

“Caleb?” 

Caleb is not a name that belongs in this house; it is foreign and unknown to the man and woman who built the place. It is an intruder in a broken home. Like the pink flowers. Like him. 

“Mm?” he hums in acknowledgement, any possible words slipping deftly from his grasp. 

“Do you need another minute?” Beau asks. She’s standing next to him. Nott is not there, at least not as far as Caleb is aware—he wonders if she couldn’t stomach setting foot in a place so utterly ruined. “I told the others we’d meet them soon, but I’m cool with waiting.”

"I'm fine," he sighs. He tries to calm the shaking in his hands. “I just…” 

She kneels down next to him, pauses for a second, then lowers herself completely to the floor. She sits with her legs crossed and hands in her lap, knee bumping against his in their clumsy closeness. For some reason _ this _is the thing that pushes him over the edge and Beau is silent as tears begin to fall from his eyes. 

“I did this.”

“I know.” 

“I killed them.”

“I know.”

He curls his fingers into his palms, nails digging painfully into the skin. Not enough to break the skin but enough to feel it—to _ ground _him. “I ruined… everything.”

Beau chews on her lip. “Yeah,” she says finally, eyes drifting across the cracked and blackened stones of the mantlepiece. “Probably.”

Caleb buries his face in his hands and—for the first time in a long time—just lets himself go. 

Usually it’s a struggle. He feels memories creep up on him in the heat of battle and he fights it. But here, in a place so utterly desolate and tired, he doesn’t fight it. He lets everything _ fade _ and falls back into muted, torturous nostalgia. His ears ring, his breath is muffled and slow, his thoughts stutter and skip. His mother’s hands cover his, the chilled steel of her wedding ring on his skin. She runs her thumbs over his hands in gentle, soothing circles. She presses a kiss to the crown of his head and he smells the scent of fresh bread that follows her around the house almost as closely as he does. She loves him. He kills her. She loves him. He kills her. She—

“-aleb? For fucks sake, man.”

He parts his cracked lips and lets out a shaky breath. “Beauregard?” 

“Don’t fucking _ do _ that!” Beau is in front of him now, gripping him by the shoulders. “I’m not your fucking therapist, okay? But I’m not going to let you get _ lost _out here.”

She relaxes her hands, letting the fall into her lap. He doesn’t look at her directly, he just focuses on her fingers, twitching and interweaving with nervous energy. 

“I want you to remember what we’re doing, Caleb,” she says. “Remember what we’re here for.”

“Horses?” He asks dryly, still not meeting her eye. Beau punches him in the arm softly.

“We’re here to end a war. We’re—_you’re— _here to stop _ this—” _ she gestures widely at the burnt wreckage of his once-home, _ “—_from ever happening to another kid ever again. Okay?”

Tears fall onto his balled fists and he inhales a long, shuddering breath. He has long since given up on not crying in front of Beau, but he will not let himself _ sob _in front of her like a fucking child. 

Her hand is on his shoulder again. “I don’t pretend to know everything you want, Caleb.” She says his name. The foreign one, the intruder. “But I think I know you well enough to know that’s something you want to do.”

“We can’t kill him,” Caleb says softly, shaking his head

Beau hums, sounding a little amused. “There are other ways to destroy a person. I think you know that better than most.”

He laughs mirthlessly. “We are going to die. You know that, don’t you?” 

“Then at least we’ll die _ trying_.”

Caleb finally drags his eyes to hers. There’s a warmth in them now, something restless and kind that seems to turn her irises from an icy blue to the colour of a cloudless summer sky. She smiles, one of the rare ones that lacks sharpness, and some of the deep tension within Caleb’s chest loosens. Unfurls. He smiles back.

Beau grins and before Caleb can stop her he’s being pulled into a tight embrace. Beau’s strong, long arms wrap around him, sending his face into a direct collision course with her shoulder. Her hugs are like her, violent and clumsy, but he doesn’t linger on how his jaw smacks into her clavicle awkwardly, or how their seating positions mean they’re both stuck in uncomfortable, half-lean stances. He brings his arms up, wrapping them around her back and burying his face gratefully into the illusory fabric of her coat, feeling the real fur underneath the spell. He sighs, shaky but real, and feels her rest her head against his. 

“I know you don’t want to hear it but I’m sorry about what happened to you,” she says. He can feel the vibrations of her words as they rumble through the contact. “You didn’t deserve it and this… what you did here? It was fucking _ awful _but you… you weren’t the root of it.”

Caleb exhales again, trying to hold himself together. It’s significantly easier when someone else is there, but she’s right; he doesn’t think he can handle those sentiments right now. Not when he’s right here in the burnt carcass of the home he left behind, with every piece of stone and wall and door a reminder of the most heinous act he’s ever committed. 

Beau tightens her grip just a little bit and they only hold each other for a few seconds longer before breaking apart. That’s okay, though; they’ve never really been the kind of people to need more. 

“You good, Widogast?” She asks.

"Mhm," he says, and he thinks he might mean it this time. “We should go.”

“Okay.”

They get to their feet and turn to leave, but not before Caleb leans down and places the little white flower from his pocket on the hearth of the old fireplace. The soft, felt-like petals stand out on the blackened stones like fresh snow. 

Nott stands on the ruined threshold and the illusory visage of Veth meets Caleb’s eyes with open sorrow. She says nothing as he silently takes her hand and the three of them walk back to town, but halfway down the country lane she clambers up onto his shoulders and begins to weave a bouquet of pilfered edelweiss into his hair. 

* * *

They return to the Fair Lady in the early afternoon, with Nott still on Caleb’s shoulders and Beau trailing close to his side. It is by no means crowded, but it still takes Caleb a moment to recognize their disguised friends. It doesn’t take too long, though, as Jester makes her presence known almost immediately. 

_“Guten tag!” _ Jester shrieks. She stands up from her chair at a table in the far corner, waving her arms above her head like it would somehow be hard to see her. Under _ seeming _, Caleb had given her the appearance of a dark-haired half-elf, preserving her facial structure and hairstyle to the best of his capabilities, but giving her pale, freckled skin and black hair made distinct by its lack of horns. 

She sits around a table with Fjord and Caduceus, who are both disguised as dark-skinned human men, tall and similar enough in appearance to pass as brothers or cousins. All three of them are decked out in simplified, farm-safe versions of their regular outfits, lacking the kind of flair that would immediately peg them as outsiders, but familiar enough to be recognisable. It’s fucking weird. 

“_Guten tag, _ Jester,” Caleb replies as they approach, leaning down to let Nott off her perch. “Where did you learn to say that?”

“The innkeeper, Ansel,” Caduceus answers. He’s already sipping on a cup of his own tea, a feat he manages in almost every town that Caleb is consistently impressed by. “He’s been very accommodating.” 

“He’s been telling us about the area,” Fjord says. He’s nursing a tall ale and Caleb watches Beau eye it hungrily as she slips into the seat next to him. “You never told us there were _ vampires _here.” 

Jester wiggles her fingers in a motion she must think indicates _ mystery_. “Vampires…”

“Not in Blumenthal,” Caleb insists flatly, sitting down between Caduceus and Nott. “That’s a rumour from farther north, I think, where it’s darker longer.”

“Boo!” Jester croons, rocking back restlessly on her chair. “There are _ definitely _ vampires here Cay-leb.” She gasps, hands coming up to cover her mouth. “Maybe you’re just throwing us off the scent because you _ are _a vampire!” 

Caleb laughs. “I assure you, Jester, if I were a vampire you would have noticed by now.”

Jester shrugs and makes a point of dramatically sliding her chair away from Caleb’s side of the table. He chuckles again, feeling a lot warmer than he had earlier. 

Beau laughs too, raising her hand to call over a server as she talks. “There’s werewolves near Kamordah.”

“Werewolves?!” Fjord perks up, suddenly very interested. Beau nods slyly. 

Nott rolls her eyes. “That’s bullshit, Beau.”

“_Is not! _” Beau squawks indignantly. “There’s werewolves in the Cyrengreen Forest! Like a whole fuckin’ pack of ‘em!”

“Who told you that?” Nott drawls, drumming her fingers on the table in a manner that shouldn’t have been condescending but was. “Your lying criminal friends?”

Beau splutters. “Hey! I was told that by _ trustworthy _people! People who wouldn’t lie about werewolves!”

“Cyrengreen is near Deastock, yes?” Caleb asks.

Beau nods enthusiastically.

“That sounds like bullshit, Beauregard.”

Beau flips him off just as their server arrives.

The man who approaches their table is about as tall as Caleb, if a little shorter. Caleb doesn’t recognize him. His hair is medium length and blond, tied back with a simple piece of string. He is stocky, with a bulk that comes from years of manual labour. He smiles warmly. 

_“Guten tag,”_ he says, and then in Common, “What can I get you?”

“Oh! Oh! This is Ansel, you guys!” Jester says, waving her hands around between Ansel and the group. “Ansel! These are our other friends!”

“It’s a pleasure,” Ansel says. “You are…?”

“Beau,” says Beau, holding out her hand. She looks a bit taken aback when Ansel takes her by the forearm instead of the hand, but she quickly recovers. “Nice town you have here.”

“_Danke,_” Ansel says. “It’s not all mine, but I do my part.” His eyes flick to Caleb and Nott expectantly.

“I’m Nott” Nott says, peeking out from Caleb’s side. She doesn’t offer her hand, but Ansel bows to her politely all the same. He turns to Caleb.

“And you must be Caleb?” 

“_Ja,_” Caleb says. He gets to his feet and holds out his hand to Ansel, gripping him by the forearm in the customary way. It’s a well-practiced gesture turned foreign through disuse, and he won’t deny the giddy rush of familiarity it sends through him. He smiles. “Caleb Widogast.”

Ansel grins. “Ah! The Zemnian I have heard so much about.”

“Hopefully good things,” Caleb says, eyes flitting to Jester ever so slightly. She winks, unfazed by his subtle glare. 

“Of course,” Ansel laughs. “Jester had a lot to say about your navigational skills. What I wouldn’t give to have had someone like that on my past travels.”

“Too bad he can’t find our caravan,” Fjord says, sipping his ale as he works their fake backstory gently into the conversation. Ansel nods knowingly, having apparently already heard the tale. 

“It’s a shame to hear about the misfortune on your journey,” Ansel says. “I was just saying to Herr Fjord that I am happy to discount the cost of your rooms tonight.”

"What?" Caleb blurts out. Beau and Nott shoot him equally confused looks. It’s Jester that leans over to explain. 

“While you three were gone that Mündermann guy came around again and he said it’s going to take a day to get the horses ready.”

“A day?” Beau hisses. “What the fuck kind of highway robbery is this?”

Jester shrugs. 

Ansel clears his throat. “The farmers are moving the ewes from the south fields this week. I believe Hans needs the horses to finish work on his share.”

Caleb begins to nod but then stops. “Wait,” he says. _ “All_ the ewes? Why?”

Ansel nods. “All of them. They’re saying there’s something dark in the south woods. We don’t want to risk any more wolf attacks this close to lambing season.”

“You have a wolf problem?” Fjord asks. Ansel shrugs. 

“We have a _ something _problem. It could be just wolves, but some folks think there’s something else in the south woods,” he smirks, leaning close to Jester. “You know, some people say it’s cursed down there… that the ghosts of murdered farmers appear to travellers on the roads at night.” 

The icy pit that had been growing in Caleb’s stomach through the entire conversation is positively cavernous now. His arms begin to prickle and burn. This _ cannot _ be fucking happening _ here_, in this fucking tavern, right now. He needs to stop this. He doesn’t want to hear this…

“Oooh!” Jester’s eyes are positively sparkling. “Like a real ghost story?” 

“Apparently so,” Ansel says with a smile, and Caleb feels every inch of himself scream silently. “A bunch of people were killed in the same—” 

“That must be rough! For the farms that are still down there!” Caleb interrupts, feeling his face redden as several eyes, not just belonging to Ansel or his friends, swing his way. 

“_J-ja,_” Ansel says. “It’s just rumours though. A way for people to make animal attacks more exciting, yes?”

Nott seems to pick up on the energy. “I don’t really want to hear about ghost stories, Jessie,” she says. 

“Oh,” Jester says, sounding a little disappointed. “Okay, Nott.”

An awkward silence descends upon the table in which Caleb manages to make thankful eyes at Nott, who gives him a small smile. For any lesser profession, salvaging such a change in mood might prove difficult, but Ansel is a tavernkeeper, and there’s not much that can’t be fixed by one question.

“Can I get you anything to eat or drink?”

A ripple of relief seems to pass through the group. “Ale,” Beau says. “Whatever dark stuff you have.”

“I’m good on drink,” Nott says. “Meat if you have it though.”

“Uh,” Caleb hesitates. Suddenly the whole world is open to him, in a way. He’d eaten in this tavern before, as a boy, but he’d never been allowed to pick for himself.

There’s a darkness in him that is ever-present, that serves as a constant reminder of his shortcomings. He should not enjoy this, he thinks, he should not have a good time in Blumenthal when he had so severely abandoned it. But for a moment—just a moment—the homesick man in him shouts just a little louder. 

“I know it is a bit late for fresh stuff but bread for the table would be good. Any sausage would be appreciated, too. You, uh, wouldn’t have schnapps, would you?”

“What do you take this place for, Herr Widogast?” Ansel says with a goodnatured scoff. “Of course we have schnapps.”

After a quick repeat of their order, Ansel heads back into the kitchen, leaving the Nein to amuse themselves once again. Caleb busies himself by folding and unfolding the wire he uses for _ message _, but is interrupted by Beau.

“The fuck did you order?” She asks.

Caleb smiles. “Something I never got to try when I was younger.”

“Oh!” Beau snaps her fingers. “You mean like liquor?” 

“_Ja_.”

Beau’s eyes glimmer with amusement. “We’re doing hard liquor in the middle of the day?”

Caleb clasps his hands together and smiles. “Oh, Beauregard, I think you are going to like it here very much.”

They drink and eat and talk for the rest of the afternoon because, really, there’s nothing else to do. While being mindful of Ansel’s knowledge of Common and ability to eavesdrop on them, they manage to formulate a feasible game plan for the next few days. Caleb gives them a cursory description of Ikithon’s country house, but mostly focuses on helping them visualise its location. By the time Seeming has almost run its course and they retire to their rooms, they’ve managed to plan out the basic steps of the four days it will take to ride to their next destination. 

Caleb is kind of... proud. They’re not really the best planners but this one is pretty good, all things considered. 

They split into their usual groups instinctively, with final words exchanged in the last minutes before Seeming drops. Jester grabs Caleb by the arm, making him promise to take her to a bakery before they leave tomorrow, which he does—of course. 

The door clicks shut behind himself and Nott. It is another forty-two seconds before the spell ends. They wait in silence for it to fall away. 

Nott, once again a goblin, begins to sort through her pack in her usual pre-bedtime motions, taking out her trinkets and knick-knacks and spell components and sorting them into little piles on the floor. Caleb shrugs off his coat and unholsters his books, placing both neatly on the simple end table at the foot of the single bed. 

“Caleb?”

“Mm?”

“I’m glad we came here.” Caleb pauses his packing and turns to Nott, who is sitting on the floor with her pack open. 

“Really?”

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot about you, you know?” She looks up at him and smiles. “The kind of things you can only learn about a person when you see where they’re from.”

Caleb’s lips twitch in amusement. “Like what?”

“Oh well, the kinds of food you like to eat are different here,” she begins to count on her fingers. “The breads and sausages. And the drinks.”

Caleb begins to unfasten his boots and armour as Nott speaks. “Mhmm,” he says, letting her continue. 

“I watched you listen to people in the bar, too. You like to eavesdrop, you know,” she smiles, revealing her gnarly teeth in full force. “I assume it’s easier when you speak the language better, which is why you don’t do it as much in other places.”

“You make me sound like a criminal, Mrs. Brenatto,” he laughs. “What’s that old Common saying about pots and kettles?”

“Also!” She scampers forward, leaning forward with a conspiratorial whisper. “Your accent has gotten way stronger, _ Herr Vidogast._”

He unsuccessfully bites down the smile that breaks across his face. “_Ja, ja, _whatever—”

_ “Vatefer!” _Nott screeches, mimicking his accent before devolving into a fit of cackles. Caleb finishes folding his chain shirt and tosses it to the end of the bed, rolling his eyes. 

“Hush now, you crazy woman!” He throws himself back onto the bed, kicking his boots off as he does. “I am going to bed.” 

_ “Gute nacht!” _

He just laughs and rolls over, wrapping the rough woolen blanket around him as he does. The sky is only just darkening, and the rumbling beginnings of a storm float through the cracks in their tiny window. Time ticks on in its slow march to morning and Caleb almost thinks Nott is done speaking when:

“I’m happy to see you happy, Caleb,” she says softly. He can hear the sound of her stacking up her buttons._ Click, click, click_. “Home is supposed to make us happy and I’m glad you haven’t lost that.”

Caleb doesn’t say anything, he just stares at the wall, tracing the wood grain with his eyes. Home is supposed to make him happy? He supposes he is a little happy. He hasn’t had _ bauernbrot _in a while, and Ansel’s store of it had been wonderfully fresh. He hasn’t seen edelweiss since he left the north five years ago, and they are still as soft and beautiful as ever… he supposes he might be happy to see Blumenthal again in the abstract sense. 

But this isn’t really his home. Not anymore. His home burned to the ground sixteen years ago and he is the one who brought it down. 

Maybe he is happy, but he no longer has the right to call this his home. 

With Nott’s final words ringing in his ears, Caleb falls asleep to the sound of soft humming, distant thunder, and clicking buttons.

_ In the blackened, smouldering ribcage of his parents’ home, Caleb stands among the ruined wildflowers. The vollstrecker woman from the cell is there too, standing in front of the hearth, staring down at the wilting edelweiss on the blackened stone. _

_ “The prodigal brother,” she says. When she turns to look at him she is not the emaciated spectre from the prison under Rosohna; she is young and full and her eyes shine with cold fire. She smiles, all teeth, and lunges forward. _

_ No longer in the hands of a starving, shackled woman, the makeshift blade plunges into his throat with pinpoint accuracy. Blood, hot and fresh, pours from his neck. The rhythm is a steady thrum, and ebb and flow like a warm river. A torrent. A flood. He grasps at the wound, but finds hands already there—old, thin hands. _

_ “Foolish boy,” Trent drawls through gnarled, cracking teeth, pulling Caleb’s face close to his, hand clamped around his throat. The teeth are yellow, like his skin, like the flowers of wild parsley. “You think I need magic to kill you?” _

_ He squeezes Caleb’s throat and it feels achingly real. He can feel his windpipe crushing beneath Trent's vice-grip, every pop and groan of cartilage sending shocks of hot pain straight through his skull. _

_ “You think I need to kill you myself, boy?” Trent spit is hot oil on Caleb’s soft flesh. “When I can so easily leave such a menial task to you and be certain you will obey?” _

_ Caleb is on his knees in the field of broken wildflowers, blade in his hand. Poppies bloom from every drop of blood that hits the scorched earth. He holds the blade to his own throat. Crystals burst from his arms, accompanied by the most excruciating burst of pain Caleb has ever felt in his life. They are tall and thin like the grasses that entangle his home and pull it back into the earth. The crystals bloom and the edelweiss blooms with them. They pull him back into the earth, into the fields of pink flowers he cannot name. _

It’s about changing history,_ says the sister in the cell. He runs the blade across his throat and the edelweiss blooms. The hot flood of _ him _ starts up once more, pouring out of his veins and down into the scorched fields and, this time, he goes with it. _

Thunder rips across the sky and Caleb is thrown from his sleep in a single, violent motion. He gasps, eagerly gulping cold air into his aching throat—his whole, untouched throat. 

A brief flash of light illuminates the single bedroom for a split second, throwing long, unearthly shadows across its features. Rain pelts the windows like hammers. There are three seconds before thunder cracks outside again. _Ein, zwei, drei._ Caleb can’t tell if the storm is coming or going. 

In the dark he runs a shaking hand through his sweaty hair, pushing the long strands out of his eyes as he tries to steel himself. In, out, in, out. He sighs, bringing trembling fingers to his throat. All he feels is coarse stubble and the panic wound tight is his chest releases. 

There is no wound, of course. The part of him that is smart and rational knew there wouldn’t be, but the pain had been so excruciating he could have sworn it had been real.

“You are driving yourself crazy,” he whispers aloud. 

“Wazzat?” Nott mumbles next to him. Caleb pats her head tiredly. 

“Nothing, Nott,” he says softly. “Just talking to myself.”

Nott grunts and rolls over, taking most of the blankets with her. Caleb doesn’t mind; he’s slept in this town on colder nights with less. Still trembling he lays himself back down on the bed, curling his knees to his chest and clutching absently at the amulet slung around his neck. 

He knows he’s just stressed because he’s back where he started. Not just Blumenthal but the north itself, the lands of the first people he had ever loved and the first he had truly hated. His creation and his destruction, tucked neatly into a little wedge of the Empire. He hasn’t been here in five long years but now he _ is_. He’s here to confront what _ made _him and he wonders what—if anything—will be left when he is done. 

But that is for later. In the morning they will leave Blumenthal behind. They will leave the valley and its wildflowers and he won’t have to come back. He won’t have to face this. 

The thunder continues and Caleb returns to an uneasy sleep. Outside, sheets of rain lash at the quiet homesteads along the riverbanks. By the time the faint peals of dawn begin to colour the horizon, however, the storm has receded, leaving in its wake churned mud and slick fields bursting with the eager, blooming faces of wildflowers turned skyward. 

The valley is silent. The surrounding hills and mountains, wrapped tightly in dark cloaks of pine and morning mist, loom wordlessly over the village and its people. The valley is silent, but silent things are wont to change.

As the sun fully crests the hills, the people of Blumenthal wake to the sound of screams. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah btw this has a plot lol. Anyone else in this club not know where the fuck the zemni fields are supposed to be?
> 
> Me, scraping the barrel of my cumulative knowledge of German culture to write this fic, pulling out a piece of paper that just says “idk, like, half-timbered houses?” and nothing else: oh schieße ariana we’re really in it now...


	2. strange things, creeping in the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I hear strange things, creeping in the night_   
_I have strange dreams in the bed where Lucy died._
> 
> — "Strange Things", Marlon Williams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the murder mystery tag becomes suddenly relevant and the gang fuck it up, like, immediately.
> 
> Welcome to my performance art piece about how Jester is actually a sadder character to write POV for than Caleb! Who could have predicted this?? Laura Bailey? Hurting MY feelings??? It's more likely than you think!
> 
> (My Zemnian formatting is going to be subject to a bit of change in this chapter. There's too much to warrant using italics, so we're just going to use context clues for now. Sorry.)

The first thing Jester becomes aware of when she wakes up is the sound of Beau swearing and falling against the hardwood floor. 

This is not an unusual thing. Beau is a woman defined by her motion; she’s in a constant state of tapping, fidgeting, and bouncing, and it would be unsettling for her to be still. So, for Beau to start her morning colliding with the floor of the inn? That’s pretty normal. 

What’s _not _normal is the second thing Jester becomes aware of. The raw, anguished screams coming from outside. 

Jester sits straight up in bed. 

“What’s going on?” she gasps, throwing her covers off in a rush.

“I dunno,” says Beau, already on her feet. She’s snatching her staff and coat from where she’d tossed them the night before. “But put your game face on. We might have trouble.” 

She tugs the coat on as she stomps towards the door and Jester hurriedly scrambles out of bed to follow. She doesn’t even grab her cloak. 

It’s the crack of dawn so no one is inside the tavern yet, but Jester can see movement through the fogged windows outside. She runs over to the doors and throws them open. 

The town square is deserted. Almost. 

Jester wishes to every God she knows the name of that she could unsee the sight before her. 

A girl is collapsed in the street, just a dozen feet from the door of the Fair Lady, covered head to toe in fresh blood. She is screaming, wailing, calling out to the town with broken, anguished cries that transcend language. The lamps within the surrounding houses and businesses begin to flicker turn on as the town responds to the disruption, but for now the girl is alone in the square.

Or she would be, if she wasn’t clutching a body. 

“Holy _shit_,” Jester says.

“What do we do?” Beau asks, looking around the empty square for any dangers, but Jester can’t find it in her to respond. She has sudden tunnel vision. She’s _barely _aware of the others appearing behind her. She can’t focus, can’t concentrate, can’t— 

In an instant, Jester tears herself from Beau’s side and sprints over to the screaming girl. 

The body lays limp in the girl’s arms, though it could barely be called a body anymore. The _thing _the girl is grasping a mangled wreck of blood and flesh. The only thing identifying it as a former human being is the shredded dress barely holding the mass of ruined flesh into the salvageable shape of a person; everything else is just _meat_. It takes all of Jester’s willpower not to gag. She feels a hand on her shoulder.

She jolts, and looks up into the calm, concerned eyes of Caduceus. 

“I’ll check the body, Jester,” he says, seeing her discomfort. “You take care of her, okay?”

Caduceus kneels and gently takes the body out of the girl’s arms, laying it down on the ground with a practiced softness. Jester pulls her eyes from the bloody mess to the living girl, who has stopped screaming and is now sobbing. She’s caked in blood and grime; the sticky post-mortem detritus left on her form is flaking from her like dried mud. Her face, smeared with all manner of ichor, is marred by two distinct tracks of violent tears that show no sign of stopping. 

“Hi, uh, _Hallo_,” Jester tries, getting to her knees in the mud and reaching out to put a hand on the girl’s arm. “I’m Jester. What’s your name?”

The girl whirls on her, grabbing her by the forearms and leaning almost her full weight forward onto her. She’s in no way as strong as Jester is, but she’s a little taller, and the pressure is uncomfortable and clunky. Through blood-crusted lips the girl pours forth a babbling string of Zemnian that Jester wouldn’t have a chance of understanding even in her wildest dreams. 

“I don’t— I don’t understand—.” She winces as the girl’s nails dig into the soft flesh of her upper arms. 

Suddenly, Jester feels a hot prickle of familiar magic creep along the back of her neck. It crawls up her skin, like gentle pins and needles into her ears and parted lips, the distinct taste of woodsmoke on her tongue. _Caleb’s magic_, something in the back of her mind registers. She turns, seeing him nod at her. 

All at once the girl’s words _click _in Jester’s head. 

“Fix her! Fix her, please! You have to help her!”

Jester’s stomach turns to lead. She bites back tears. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, as gently as she can. “I think it’s too late.”

She’s not speaking in Zemnian, nor is the girl speaking Common, but there’s a spark of understanding that passes between them regardless. A part of Jester can’t help but be excited by it. _Tongues_, right? That’s the spell? She wonders if the Traveller could teach it to her. 

_Focus!_

That’s not important right now. What’s important is the girl in front of her, the body Caduceus is slowly examining, and the dark, dark blood being smeared over Jester’s arms and nightgown by the tortured throes of her charge. 

Jester adjusts the girl’s position, pulling her closer while also righting herself; bringing the two of them into a more comfortable seated position on the packed dirt road, angled _ever so slightly_ away from the corpse. 

_Be the cleric. Be the cleric. Focus on your patient. _

She takes the girl’s pale hands in her own, noting the bruised and split skin on her palms. From carrying the body, maybe? Jester reaches out, cupping the girl’s cheek softly in one of her hands, forcing gentle eye contact.

“Will you let me heal you?” She asks. “I promise I’m a very good healer.”

The girl’s eyes widen, panic visibly filling her wild stare. “W-what? No! Heal _her_!”

“I can’t,” Jester says, trying to control the miserable waver in her own voice. She has to be strong; she has to be the cleric. “But I can heal your hands, okay?”

The girl whimpers and Jester lets warm healing magic flow from her hands into the damaged palms of her patient. The wounds begin to knit closed and some of the tension bleeds from the girl’s shoulders. She slumps forward, pressing her forehead to Jester’s shoulder. Jester places a steadying hand on her head, holding her close. 

“What happened?” Jester says in her most soothing tone. In times like these she tries to emulate her mother—her calm voice and steady hands—she hopes it works. 

“We were just picking flowers before work started,” she sobs, inhaling stuttering breath after stuttering breath into Jester’s arms. “We were out by the old Ermendrud house, and—and I know we’re not supposed to go out there but, I... b-but I…” 

She breaks into a fit of hard, violent sobs before choking out the end of her sentence. Jester runs her fingers through the girl’s hair, the way her mother does for her. “I took my eyes off her for one second! One second! I…”

“What’s your name?” 

“L-Liesel,” the girl sobs.

“I’m Jester,” says Jester. “I already said that before, but I don’t know if you understood me.”

Liesel blinks rapidly. Wide blue eyes that remind Jester a little of Caleb’s stare up at her like they’re seeing her for the first time. The next thing out of the girl’s mouth is a stuttered question, almost unnervingly calm. “W-what are you?”

Jester doesn’t know what she means, but then she follows Liesel’s gaze. She’s looking slightly up from her face, at the space where her horns are. Jester looks down, seeing Liesel’s pale hands clamped tightly on her freckled and very _blue _arms.

Oh. She’s a tiefling. 

And she hadn’t been a tiefling yesterday. 

“Ah,” Jester says dumbly. “Fuck.”

She looks over her shoulder to Caleb, Nott, Beau, and Fjord, who all seem to be having the same realisation at wildly different paces. Nott immediately turns herself invisible. 

_Cast Seeming,_ she mouths in Caleb’s direction. He shakes his head and points to the opposite side of the square, where— 

“Get back! Back!” A shout in Zemnian rips out from the ether. 

A woman comes striding through the cluster of gathered onlookers. Light woollen robes over a simple nightgown flow out behind her, snapping above the dirt streets with the force of her forward momentum. 

Her features are stern and pinched. She’s human, probably in her mid-fifties, with short, dark hair struck through with dramatic streaks of grey that serve to make her look even more formidable. She stops in front of Jester and Caduceus, staring down at them hawkishly through delicate wire spectacles. She’s flanked by two moderately armed humans, probably crownsguard, who begin to usher the townsfolk back. 

Hands are on Liesel in an instant and Jester instinctively holds her closer. 

“Let go of her,” the stern woman snaps in Zemnian. “We have this under control.”

The hands, which Jester can now see are attached to a priest of some kind, pull Liesel’s limp form from her grasp. She gets one last glimpse of her, with her lank blonde hair streaked dark with ichor and blood, before Liesel and the body disappear past the small group of onlookers. 

Jester stays on her knees.

“Everyone return to your homes immediately,” the woman barks to the townspeople, ignoring the clerics at her feet. There aren’t many people, maybe five or six, but it’s still too much of a crowd. 

There’s a ripple of discomfort and no one moves. Jester watches the woman grit her teeth. “Go now!” She snaps. “It’s not safe here.” 

Startled into motion, the crowd begin to dissipate. Jester looks back at her gathered friends, and Beau shrugs. Does she mean them, too?

As if sensing their uncertainty, the woman’s gaze flicks to the Nein. “You all! Stay put!”

She turns to one of the crownsguard flanking her. “Go find Hans and Martha,” she says in a low voice. The Zemnian continues to translate itself neatly in Jester’s head. “We can’t let them find out through word of mouth.” 

The crownsguard nods and is gone in a flash, high tailing it towards the direction of the temple, the steeple of which towers grey and foreboding above the sleepy village. Apparently satisfied, the woman finally looks down at the two clerics still kneeling on the road. 

“Who are you?” She asks, still speaking Zemnian. “Explain yourselves immediately.” 

Caduceus shoots her a glance — obviously not understanding the words. Jester’s heart stutters in her chest before she dives into and uncontrollable response. 

“I’m Jester!” Jester says, not bothering to lie. “I’m a healer! I was just trying to help—”

“That is not the responsibility of outsiders, _girl_,” the woman interrupts. “A death in our streets and strange travellers in our midst? Do you realise how this looks?!”

“There’s been a misunderstanding.” A male voice enters the scene and it takes Jester’s mind—whirling with the rapid translations of Zemnian—a second to realise it’s Caleb. 

He sounds different when he speaks his first language. She’d noticed it a little in the cells with the Scourger; his speech is faster, more fluid and snappier, like he isn’t thinking so hard about what he’s saying. It’s certainly interesting to be able to understand it for once.

The woman narrows her eyes as Caleb steps forward. “I was informed that a group of travellers from the north arrived in town yesterday,” she says. “I assume those travellers are you folk?” 

“Yes, and—”

“I was not informed, however, that those travellers carried _beasts_ and _fiends_ among their ranks.” She cuts Caleb off in a practiced motion. “Suspicious, don’t you think, that such a grizzly death should take place the night you arrive in my town?” 

Jester feels her blood begin to boil. _This bitch,_ she thinks. Maybe she’d just spent too much time away from the Empire, but she didn’t remember the bigotry being this upfront.

“Racism is a bit unbecoming of a _lady_, don’t you think?” Jester retorts before anyone can stop her. She hears Beau stifle a snort behind her. 

The woman’s thin eyebrows arch high on her face. She narrows her eyes at Jester, really looking at her now. “Careful, _girl_,” she says. “You are a guest in this town. Do not forget yourself.” 

She says the word guest like it’s a condemnation. 

Caleb steps forward, pulling his coat closer around himself in a motion Jester recognises as intense nervousness. He seems to power through it, though. Good on him.

“My apologies,” he says. “While my companion is brash she is not wrong. The events of this morning are indeed a tragedy, but it does not do well to forget our humanity in times of crisis.” 

The woman tears her eyes from Jester and back to Caleb, frowning.

“Please,” Caleb continues placatingly. “We mean your town no harm. We were travelling in disguise to avoid… unsavoury encounters. Your reaction just now proves that necessity, yes?” 

There’s an unavoidable bite to his implication, and Jester watches the woman wrestle with it for a moment before she closes her eyes and lets out a long sigh. 

“Very well,” she says. “I… _apologise _for my brusque attitude but you must be able to imagine my position.”

“Of course.”

“You are outsiders in a town that does not often see them,” she continues, shooting a pointed glance at Jester. “I will have to question you later.”

Jester nods and so does Caleb. The seems to relax just a touch. “My name is Angel Müller,” she says. “I am mayor and lawmaster of Blumenthal. Things do not happen in this town without my knowing, do you understand?”

“We understand, Frau Müller,” Caleb says, bowing slightly. 

“You are staying at the inn? I must ask you to remain there, under guard, until I return. You are not to leave or speak to any townsfolk until I permit you to do so,” she says. “These are not suggestions. I assure you that the jailhouse is far less comfortable than the Fair Lady.”

Caleb bows and the rest of the Nein somewhat clumsily follow along. Jester just stares, skin still crawling from the previous insult. If Müller notices, she doesn’t say anything. 

She gives them all one last once-over before turning on her heel with a curt “good day!” and stomping back off in the direction of the town hall. A single crownsguard remains. She stares down at Jester and Caduceus, then back up at the other, assorted members of the Nein. 

“Get inside,” she says in heavily accented Common. The Might Nein do not find it in themselves to argue. 

Jester is just about to get to her feet when she catches sight of her hands, red-on-blue in the morning light. Something deep inside her twists, and she feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes once more. 

“Is there nothing we can do?” She asks, not sure to whom. 

“Some things are beyond us, Jester,” Caduceus assures in his soft, rumbly voice. “Sometimes we have to know when to let things go.”

Jester squeezes her eyes shut, willing the tears away.

“I said get inside.” The crownsguard’s voice is much louder now—oh—it’s because she’s standing over them. She’s holding the hilt of her sheathed longsword. Not a threat… just a suggestion of one.

Jester feels Caduceus grab her gently by the shoulders and help her to her feet. She leans against him as he snakes a large arm around her shoulders. The two of them trudge back towards the inn, silently followed by the crownsguard woman, both drenched in the blood of a dead girl as the sun shines dimly down on the village of Blumenthal. 

* * *

Approximately an hour later, Jester is sitting in a worn metal tub on the floor of her and Beau’s room, swishing her hands around in the hot water Beau has just finished pouring. 

“Need more?” Beau asks, shaking the last drops of precious warm water out of the pot they’d convinced Ansel to let them borrow. Jester shakes her head. “I’m okay!”

It had taken a little while for things to settle. There had been a lot of loud bickering, mostly from Beau needling Caleb for the details of his conversation with Müller, who Jester has decided to refer to as “the bitch”. 

The next problem was Ansel, who had to be talked down from at least six separate panic attacks upon arriving at the tavern and finding out his guests had apparently metamorphosed into far more interesting people during the night. Caleb had been relegated to damage control, coaxing Ansel out of his (arguably totally valid) panic spiral with soft Zemnian and careful excuses. 

“This reminds me of Trostenwald,” Beau had lamented. “I thought we were, like, big and tough enough at this point to not get put in goddamn time out by small town lawmasters.”

“What?” Nott had interjected. “Now we’re tough enough to get put in time out by big town lawmasters?”

“Exactly.”

“If we want to get out of here without a massive paper trail, we have to play it by the book,” Fjord had said in a hushed voice.

“I guess! It just fucking sucks to be on fuckin’ _house arrest _again.”

Caduceus and Jester, who had still been covered in blood and grime, had eventually decided to take baths. This had involved getting Ansel to tell them where the tavern’s well and bathing supplies were. This had taken a while, predictably, but Beau and Fjord had offered to help, and now here Jester is. In a bath. 

Just_ thinking. _

Jester stares down at her hands. The blood has turned dark on her blue skin, smeared thick on her bare arms in small handprints where Liesel had grasped onto her like a tethered boat in a storm. It had been an odd and shocking feeling, to be someone’s anchor like that. 

But that’s her job, right? She’s the cleric.

She closes her hands into fists and watches the drying blood flake away, staining the bathwater a murky brown. 

“Jess?” Jester glances over, watching as Beau pauses the process of folding her blood-stained nightgown into a neat pile. The blood is more noticeably red on the pale fabric; stark, like it’s been freshly spilled on snow. Beau is looking at her with concern dancing in her expression.

“I’m alright!” she says, maybe not really meaning it. That’s for her to know, though; not Beau. “I’m just thinking about Liesel and stuff…”

“The girl?”

Jester nods. “I wish I could have helped her more.”

Beau scoffs. “I think you helped her plenty.”

“We couldn’t save her sister.”

“You can’t save everyone,” Beau says in an eerie echo of Caduceus’s earlier words. 

Jester want to protest but she thinks maybe Beau knows that more than most of them—more than her, at least; Jester hadn’t been there when Molly had died, after all. She hadn’t been able to see or move or cast that day in the cart, and that is going to stay with her forever, but she’s come to terms with it. Or something like terms, at least. 

But Liesel’s sister had been right _there_, freshly dead in Caduceus’s arms and there had been absolutely nothing Jester could do. She hadn’t been tied up or knocked out or hidden away in a cage on a cart. Jester had been _there_, with the power of a God at her fingertips and still… _still… _

She hasn’t ever had to sit aside and let someone _die _before. 

“Are we going to stay and help?” She asks suddenly. Beau hums thoughtfully. 

“I think Caleb will want to, so Nott will as well. I’m not opposed to it, but…” Beau looks over her shoulder and out the window, where a greying haze of storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. “I don’t know. Shit’s crazy as is...” 

“I think I’d like to stay.”

“We don’t have much of a time limit on this mission.” Beau sinks down next to the bath, leaning her back against the worn metal. “I don’t see the harm is staying here for a few more days…”

“You’re worried though,” Jester notes. She can see it in Beau’s shoulders; the tension she’s grown used to noticing is threading tight in her muscles. 

“I’m worried about how long Caleb’s going to be able to hold it together.” Beau begins to chew her lip nervously. “And I’m worried about you and Cad and Fjord… your Gods aren’t exactly kosher up here, you know? Someone like Müller finding out who you worship could break bad really quickly.”

“Oh,” Jester almost growls. “She’s a real _bitch_, that lady...”

Beau laughs dryly. “I hear ya.”

“I guess…” Jester sighs. “I sorta got used to not having to worry about Gods or people being racist dicks… ya’know? The Dynasty isn’t always so great but, _man…_ I forgot how much the Empire _sucks_.” 

Jester sinks a little lower into the water, punctuating her exasperated statement with a short burst of blown bubbles to lessen some of the tension. It maybe works, because Beau gives a short, half-smile, and Jester always counts that as a win. 

“I should leave you to your bath,” Beau says, tilting her head to look Jester in the eye. “Thanks for letting me talk a little bit. The boys are cool but you’re easier to chat with.”

“Anytime, Beau,” Jester says._ That’s what I’m here for. _

Beau gets up and heads to the door, turning back before she leaves. “You’re sure you’re alright?” She asks again, and Jester can’t stand the worried glint in her eye. “You looked kinda… frazzled, before.”

Jester waves her off. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just a bit shocked! You know?”

“I know,” Beau says, smiling wanly. “So much for Blumenthal being boring, huh?”

And then she’s gone, leaving Jester alone. 

She sits there silently, soaking in the slowly cooling water like a shitty stew, watching the curling wisps of blood from her skin diffuse in the murky liquid. It’s a bit like milk in coffee, though nowhere near as pleasant. 

She submerges herself up to her nose in the bath and closes her eyes, not caring about how dirty the water has gotten. She doesn’t think about that. No. She thinks of Liesel’s face instead, streaked with grime and tears and her sister’s blood. She thinks of her hands, clutching wildly for support and stability, slick with ichor that made them that much harder to hold. 

They’d been picking flowers. Before work? Is that what she’d said? They’d just been picking flowers. It made her think of Yasha, which was too sad to dwell on. No. She couldn’t think about that. Think about Liesel. Think about now. Where had she said they were? At the old Eremndrud house…?

Ermendrud…?

_“My name was Bren Aldric_ Ermendrud._” They trundle along the uneven riverside, secrets spilling forth with every bump and hitch in the cart. _

_“Ich bin Bren Aldric _Ermendrud_. Willst du mir deinen Namen verraten?” The names are the only three words Jester can pick out, but the Scourger understands so much more._

_“It would be best not to mention the name Bren, or _Ermendrud_, for that matter.” Jester wasn’t intending to mention his old name, but she nods along anyway. _

Jester’s eyes snap open. 

“Ah… _fuck_.”

* * *

Jester is practically vibrating by the time she dries off, gets dressed, prepares her spells, and heads downstairs. She takes the steps three at a time, almost stumbling at the foot of them before recovering and taking in the scene before her. 

Her friends are gathered tightly around a large table near the bar with the notable absence of Caduceus, who Jester supposes isn’t taking his bath with the same frantic rush she just had. Ansel is there too, leaning forward and listening intently to something Caleb is saying. 

Everyone is properly dressed now, though all of them have an air of dishevelment from the hectic aura of the morning’s events. They’re all nursing tankards of ale, looking rightly on edge. Jester doesn’t blame them; she’s feeling pretty damn on edge herself. 

She strides forward. Calm. Be calm.

“Zadash?” Ansel is saying. “That is a far goal.” 

“Work takes us everywhere,” Caleb says softly. 

“We spent a good while on the Coast a while back,” Fjord offers, taking a sip of his drink. “Have you ever been down that far?”

Ansel’s eyes widen. “_Nein_. I have never been farther south than Berleben, I’m afraid, I—”

“Caleb?” Jester interjects upon reaching the table. The gathered party jump at her sudden presence, Nott fumbling wildly to keep her grip on her tankard. 

“Yes, Jester?” 

“May I speak with you? Privately?” she says, trying her best to remain Still and Calm (with a capital S and C). Caleb, despite the obvious fatigue weighing on him, seems to pick up on her discomfort. 

“O-okay,” he stutters. He stands up, chair screeching loudly as he pushes back from the table. He turns to Ansel and says something in Zemnian that Jester can no longer understand. Ansel nods. 

Jester doesn’t wait for Caleb to reach her. She grabs his arm and tugs him along behind her, walking briskly back up the stairs until they’re outside their rooms. She whirls on him, trying to organise her thoughts enough to speak.

Caleb isn’t a super tall guy, but Jester is short and she has to look up at him when they stand this close. He looks down at her, sky-blue eyes peering out from behind dark-rimmed lids. He looks pale, paler than usual, and Jester notices the split second he doesn’t seem to be able to focus on her before his eyes adjust. 

“You look like shit, Caleb,” she says in a teasing tone. He just chuckles. 

“I feel like shit,” he concedes. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“No, but… how much sleep did you get last night?” She asks half out of concern and half out of morbid curiosity. She hasn’t seen Caleb this tired in a long time—not since he stayed up all night decoding Avantika’s journal back in Darktow; a day which could have gone _a lot _better than it had. 

“I thought I got enough,” he says, looking slightly confused. He rubs his throat absentmindedly. “We all went to sleep quite early, but… I woke up tired, is all.”

“Like, _bad _tired?” She hopes he catches her drift. 

He does. “I don’t think I will be able to restore my spells today.”

He presses a hand to his sternum and Jester instantly knows what he’s talking about. She’s only felt the feeling of stretched magic a few times before, but it’s never pleasant. The mortal body can only hold so much magic, and though that quantity can be increased through study and practice, the depletion of those reserves leaves one feeling hollowed out and _thin_—not in a physical way but in, like, a _soul _way. 

“Okay, well,” Jester tries to come up with something encouraging. “We’ll try to have a cool and chill day today, yeah?”

“Probably easier said than done at this point,” he muses. “How about you? Are you feeling alright?”

Why do people keep asking her that? 

“Yes, yes! I’m fine!” She gives him a gentle, not-so-gentle whack on the arm. “I have something to tell you. So, listen and don’t freak out, okay?”

The vagueness is making him worried, she can tell, so she soldiers on. 

“Your last name is Ermendrud,” she says. It’s not a question, but she makes it one. “R-right? Your real one?”

“_Ja…_” He looks disarmed suddenly. “Jester, what are you…?”

“Liesel and her sister were at your house, I think…” Jester can feel herself losing steam, but she carries on. “When I was talking to her before she said they were at the old Ermendrud house picking flowers. That’s… That’s where they were when…”

“At… my h… house?”

Jester nods. “She said they were there when her sister was attacked, or… murdered, I guess. Killed?”

They’re both quiet for a while, creating a little pocket of silence in which the only sounds are the ambient clattering of cutlery and muffled conversation downstairs. But it’s almost oppressive, that silence, up here in the narrow hallway with no one around but them.

For a moment Jester thinks maybe Caleb is doing the thing he does when he burns people, when he gets stuck in his own head, and she starts to freak out. She hasn’t ever had to handle this on her own before; this isn’t her _thing_. This is a thing for Nott or Beau, with their knowing hands and different kinds of love and inexplicable, intimate knowledge of Caleb’s secrets they pretend not to have.

But relief comes in a rush as Caleb moves. He brings his hands up, tiredly scrubbing at his face and closing his eyes tight. He sighs. 

“You… You are sure that’s what she said?” He murmurs, voice barely more than a breath. 

“Yes. I’m pretty sure.”

“That is, uh…” He laughs without humour. “That complicates things some.” 

“Is it really your house?” Jester asks. “What if Ermendrud is, like, a really common name or something?”

“No. It’s… It’s mine.”

They’re quiet for another moment. 

“She said they’re not supposed to go there,” Jester says finally, breaking the heavy silence. She remembers the way Liesel had said it, all guilty, like it was a warning she had heard a million times and had been stupid for not heeding. For some reason she feels like she needs to see Caleb’s reaction to that. 

And Caleb just nods, like _yeah, that tracks_. 

“Ansel told us about the ghost stories,_ ja?_” He won’t make eye contact with Jester as he speaks, no matter how subtly she tries to catch it. “He said that there are supposed to be spirits in the southern fields?”

Jester feels her pulse stutter for a second. “Oh. _Caleb_...” 

“Uh… _ja_, m-my… my mother and father died in, uh, in a fire. I think it was probably dramatic enough to create a bit of a ghost story…”

_Now doesn’t that just make a _ridiculous _amount of sense. _Jester thinks.

Caleb is like a puzzle; one she’s been piecing together without a picture to guide her for months. His statement is handed to her tentatively, given with shaking voice and hand, and Jester takes it without much fanfare. But it’s so important; it’s _the piece. _

Not the piece that finishes the puzzle. Jester doesn’t think she’ll ever finish Caleb’s puzzle—she’ll probably never finish _any _of their puzzles; you can’t ever really know a person that much. No, this is just the piece that finally lets her see what the picture _is_. This is the piece that pulls it all together, the one that makes her look back on little moments in the past and maybe_, just maybe, _understand why he is the way he is. 

“A fire?”

He gives her a tight, wry smile, like he knows what she’s thinking, and simply nods. 

“You think that’s why they got told to stay away?” She asks. 

“_Ja._ People in small towns like this one tend to be, uh, superstitious to a fault.”

“Do you believe it?”

“No,” Caleb says. Jester kind of wants to ask him if he just doesn’t _want _to believe it, but that seems _too _rude. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Ghosts are real, though.”

“Yes, but…” He frowns. “Ansel talked about wolf attacks, did he not?”

“Oh! He did! Yeah! It could be that!” 

_Except Liesel only looked away for a second,_ a voice in her head says. _She only looked away for a second. How could that much destruction happen in a second?_

“It’s _definitely _that,” Caleb reiterates. He looks ticked off, which Jester is kind of annoyed by. She hadn’t meant to say anything upsetting and he should know that. But she’s not going to be mad at him. That’s not productive.

“Could be vampires,” she says instead, hoping to diffuse some of the tension. 

And it works. Caleb gives her his first real smile of the day and she can’t help but crack a grin. “For the _last _time, Jester,” he says, laugh playing on the edge of his voice. “There are no vampires in Blumenthal.”

“That you know about!”

They both laugh—his soft, hers light—filling that empty, suffocating silence with something bright. 

“I meant what I said the other day, you know,” Jester says, taking his hands in much the same way she had a few days prior. “We’re getting into some pretty crazy shit, yeah? So, if you need anyone to talk to I’m here.”

Caleb smiles weakly. “I don’t want to ask that of you, Jester.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

The moment isn’t perfect, it rarely is, but it’s nice all the same. So what if their smiles are both a little strained, a little tired, a little frazzled? They’re still smiling. That’s got to count for something.

“You know Cay-leb,” she says, drawing his name out in her own way. “As your cleric I think you should get some rest.”

“But-”

“No buts! Doctor’s orders!” She gives him a swift pat on the arm. He winces. ‘I’d rather you be a little more rested if we’re going to be fighting vampires, you know?”

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly but concedes. She had known he would; the bags under his eyes are looking deeper than her haversack, and that kind of fatigue often has a mind of its own. “_Ja, _okay.”

“Great! Just try an hour or something, it’s not like we’re doing anything else.”

“Mm. No pranks?”

“Me?_ Never.”_

“Uh-huh.” Caleb waves after her as she begins to descend the stairs back into the tavern, leaving him at the door to his room.

“It’s true!” She assures. This doesn’t earn a response, but she feels a bit lighter walking down the stairs than she had walking up, and that’s not nothing. 

* * *

They regroup a little later when the bitch comes calling around midday. Nott, in her halfling disguise, zips up the stairs to grab Caleb as the rest of them mill around nervously, trying to seem as unassuming as possible. It’s kind of hard. 

As soon as Müller shows up the tavern clears out. Even Ansel, who had recovered from his shock enough to engage them all in nice, if boring, conversation, leaves them to their devices with a curt wave and a subtle thumbs up as soon as the mayor and her small retinue of crownsguard enter the building. 

She’s changed her clothes from her brief appearance in the early morning to something more put together. Her robes, still grey and woollen, are fur-lined at the collar, and they lie modestly over her tall frame. They’re not extravagant, but they’re well-kept, and lack the road-wear their own garments do. 

“Good morning,” she says in Common. Her voice is even deeper in the new language, Jester notices. “I am pleased to see you all still here… except… the Zemnian man from this morning? Where is he?”

“Caleb is upstairs.” Fjord explains. “One of our other companions is retrieving him.” 

As if on cue, Nott and Caleb come trudging down the stairs. Jester’s heart sinks a little at the sight of Caleb, who still looks like he’d been run over by a horse the night before and should really be sleeping it off. She wonders if even tried to sleep at all, or if he’d just sat up there and pet Frumpkin for the last two hours. She wouldn’t put it past him. 

Speaking of Frumpkin, he’s actually there—curled around Caleb’s neck and staring daggers at Angela while his master remains impassive. Jester stifles a laugh. 

“Frau Müller,” Caleb greets, giving her a short bow and nothing else. 

Müller nods and says something in Zemnian, gesturing to the pair of spare seats across from her at the table. Caleb and Nott climb into them, but not before Caleb shoots something back in Zemnian. It’s soft and short but it’s apparently potent enough to make Müller narrow her eyes. She almost looks like a serpent, Jester thinks, like the snakes on the Coast that rattle when they’re pissed off. 

“I will try to be accommodating for your… _companions_,” she says, in Common now. “However, Common is not my first language.”

“Nor mine,” Caleb says simply. “Regardless, I like to put some courtesy into my dealings with people, you understand?”

Jester locks eyes with Beau from across the table, who looks halfway between incredibly impressed and searingly angry. Jester is just trying to keep herself from laughing; If this is how tired Caleb talks to bitchy mayors maybe she was too quick to get him to take a nap. 

Fjord clears his throat loudly. 

“Uh, thank you for meeting with us, Mayor Müller,” he says. “I know today has been difficult, to say the least. I’m hoping we can sort out any confusions and misunderstandings about our presence here.”

“I hope so too,” Müller says. With that, she reaches into her robes and produces a thick journal, slamming it on the table. She sits down across from the Nein, and flips the book open to a blank page. As she does, the two crownsguard move, taking up a position at each of the tavern’s main entrances.

Müller smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Let’s begin.”

Mayor Müller’s interrogation is less an interrogation and more an interview, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

The story they tell her is almost exactly the same as the one they’d entered town with—mercenaries heading south after a job up north—with the small addition that they had taken to travelling in disguise for ease of movement in rural areas. 

They are well practiced at tag-team bullshitting (their entire success as a group up to this point is arguably built on it) so dancing around Müller’s questions in a believable manner is child’s play. Müller takes the whole thing in with a shrewd, calculating eye. Unforgiving and cold in her questions, which dig almost too deep for comfort. 

She reminds Jester of one of her old mathematics tutors — Miss Yetalla — who had a face like a bug and a temper like a toddler and had left the Chateau in tears halfway through her third day on the job. But Jester can’t prank the mayor of Caleb’s hometown into leaving them alone, so she holds her tongue and, begrudgingly, lets Müller walk all over them. 

The entire ordeal takes the better part of the early afternoon, and by the end of it they’ve given her so much fabricated backstory to chew on that Jester almost feels sorry for her.

In exchange, Müller gives them the barest scraps of information about the events of the morning._ How kind, _Jester thinks to herself. 

“The attacks took place on an abandoned property in the southern fields. The victim was Hana Mündermann. Her sister, Liesel, was the girl you met this morning,” she explains. “I believe you know their father?” 

“We do,” Fjord says. “We spoke to him yesterday about acquiring horses for our travels south.”

“He and his wife are… grieving,” Müller says. “I would ask you to refrain from approaching them until this has been settled.”

“No offense, miss mayor,” Beau says in a tone that seems to denote a lot of offense is going to be intended. “But we need to _leave_. Like, _soon_, and we’ve already paid for the animals. If you’re content that we’re not to blame for this, you should have no problem letting us go.” 

“You seem to be mistaken, _Fräulein_,” Angela says with a smirk. “I never said you were free from suspicion.”

Beau huffs and leans back in her chair. “We’ve heard about animal attacks in the south fields,” she says. “This is obviously just that.”

“Perhaps. But there are darker things in the south woods. Tales of beasts and fiends and ghosts. The place the Meundermann girls were attacked is supposedly haunted, you know.”

Jester sees Caleb ball his hands into tight, shaking fists across the table, but fortunately all eyes are on Beau. The monk scoffs. 

“You don’t strike me as woman that believes in ghost stories, miss mayor.”

“I’m not,” Müller says, smiling for the first time Jester has seen. “But small towns like Blumenthal thrive on superstition and rumour. A girl is dead and there are monsters in the woods. And here you are,” she gestures widely to the group, pausing a little too long on Jester and Fjord. “Such odd folk, here at such an odd time. What would my people say if I let you go?” 

“So, this is an image thing?” Beau leans forward, almost rising out of her chair. The mayor doesn’t even flinch. “You’re keeping innocent people under fucking house arrest to play into some shitty fairy tales?”

“I am not playing into anything,” Müller says. “I am trying to assuage fear. One does not stop people from being frightened by telling them their fears are unfounded, one stops people from being frightened by showing them the truth _despite _their fears. There is a fine difference.”

“So, we sit on our asses until your people hunt down a pack of wolves and a bunch of sheep get moved?” 

“Precisely.”

“What’s stopping us from running?” 

“Nothing. But I presume you don’t want your names and descriptions posted on every wanted list from west Zemni to the Candles?” 

Beau shuts her mouth. Müller smirks. 

“Good,” she says, getting to her feet. The crownsguard at the exits stand to attention. “That is my questioning finished. I will be here to update you in the morning. Thank you for your time.”

“And yours, lady mayor,” Fjord responds before anyone else can stick their foot in their mouth. 

With short, unfriendly pleasantries exchanged, the Mighty Nein are left alone for the first time that day. 

The release of tension is palpable. 

“Fuck,” Jester says emphatically, sinking low into her chair. “That lady is crazy.”

“I didn’t like it when she called me_ fräulein_,” Beau says.

Fjord grunts, slouching over the table and resting his head in his hands. “Uh-huh.”

“It made me feel bad,” she continues, “and not in a good way.”

“Yup.”

“You know how sometimes you can feel bad in a good way? It wasn’t like that at all. I’m actually kind of upset.”

“Beau,” Fjord says carefully. “I will _pay_ you to stop talking.”

“Right. Sorry.” 

“Where the fuck did the attack even happen?” Nott mumbles. “I bet if we can prove for a fact we never went there they’ll let us go, right?”

The group falls into contemplative silence, which is immediately made uneasy by a low, nervous laugh escaping Caleb.

Frumpkin, who had spent most of the interview winding around the groups’ ankles, hops up on the table, letting Caleb sink his fingers into his soft fur. All eyes turn to him and he makes contact with none of them. 

“That might be hard, Nott,” he says. “It was, uh… at my old house.”

“What?!” Beau says in alarm. Nott goes pale. 

Caleb winces at the outburst. “Beauregard, _please_.” 

“Don’t “Beauregard, please” me, Caleb,” Beau says, pointing an impassioned finger in his direction. “Why didn’t you lead with that shit? How long have you known?”

Caleb remains impassive, but he makes an obvious effort of not looking at Beau as she worms her way into his delicate personal space. “Jester told me after she talked to Liesel.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” Beau demands. Caleb sighs.

“It wasn’t relevant.”

Beau throws her hands up in the air incredulously. “Not relevant? That bitch said it was haunted!” 

“It’s not _haunted_.”

“You lived in a haunted house?” Caduceus rumbles. Caleb bites his lip in frustration. 

“No!”

“Are you all talking about the Ermendrud house?”

The six of them spin around all at once, coming face to face with Ansel, who’s calmly leaning against the door that leads into the tavern’s back room. Nott hisses and clambers up on the table, crossbow already halfway off her shoulder before Caduceus wrestles it out of her grip. 

“How long have you been spying on us?!” she cries, attention torn between Ansel and the impromptu tug-of-war she’s having with Caduceus over the weapon. 

“Not long,” he says, a little cryptically. Nott narrows her eyes. 

“What did you hear, motherfucker?”

“That was a _joke_.” Ansel gives her a wan smile. “But not much, I swear. Why? Are you really murderers planning on killing all the little girls in town?”

Nott gasps, highly offended, but Caduceus just chuckles. “Of course not,” he says.

“Hana was killed at the Ermendrud house,” Jester explains. Ansel nods. 

“I figured,” he says, getting up from where he’s leaning against the door and making his way towards their table. There’s no one else in the tavern to hear them as they talk across the room to each other, but the close quarters make the Nein that little bit more comfortable. 

“You are thinking you’ll find something useful there?” Ansel says, pulling up a chair. 

“Well… we haven’t decided if we’re going. But if we do we need to investigate while the crime scene is still fresh,” Jester says, falling into her detective role neatly. She feels a little bad about calling Caleb’s old house a “crime scene”, but it’s kind of true. 

“Jester’s right,” Beau says. “If there are animal tracks or whatever they’re going to wash away in the storm.”

“You think it’s something physical?” Ansel asks.

“What else could it be?” Beau retorts. 

_Ghosts, _Jester thinks.

“It could be ghosts, _ja?”_

Beau laughs. “You believe that shit?” she drawls. Fjord elbows her.

“Maybe,” Ansel says, seemingly amused. “I did not live here when the Ermendrud family died but I believe a death that violent can leave behind energy of a sort.”

“Family?” Jester buts in. She’s not sure why she’s doing it. Not when she already knows the answer, but she pushes forward anyway, ignoring the incredulous look she’s getting from Caleb. “Y-you said “family”? We heard it was just a couple?”

Ansel shakes his head. “It was only the two of them that died in the fire, but they had a son, I think. He was living in Rexxentrum when it happened, and he never came back… rumour is he died pretty shortly afterwards. That was well before I moved here but that’s small-town gossip for you.”

As much as she wants to Jester doesn’t _dare _look at Caleb. She keeps her eyes on Ansel, content with the small motion she sees from Nott out of the corner of her eye, hoping it’s something comforting.

“That’s very sad,” Jester says in a small voice. Ansel smiles softly. 

“Wait, you said fire?” Fjord asks, and Jester wants to kick him, but she can see he’s also making a conscious effort not to draw Ansel’s attention towards Caleb, who looks like he wants to fucking _die _right there at the table. 

_“Ja,_ it burned down about… Gods… fifteen or sixteen years ago?” Ansel says. “Like I said, I was not here at the time.”

“That’s uh… quite a way to go,” Fjord says, looking like he regrets saying it immediately. “And their… uh… their son…”

Ansel nods, apparently not picking up on Fjord’s obvious spiralling. “It’s quite a selfish thing, but part of me wishes he’d come back to claim the property before he died, maybe then they’d clear it out.”

“So, the ruins are still there? Who owns the house now?” Caduceus asks. He’s been quiet throughout the whole conversation, but Jester can see the wheels turning slowly in his head. 

“The town. Müller, if you want to get technical, but the property is abandoned. No one uses it.”

“That’s a bit of a hazard,” Fjord says. 

_“Ja,”_ Ansel taps his finger idly on the table. “But it is more the ghost story that keeps people away, not the infrastructure. In a way that is good. It stops people from going over there and getting themselves hurt. But… in situations like this that kind of superstition is a bit of a bane.” 

“How so?” Fjord asks. 

“When people believe something like that it affects every aspect of their lives. If they truly believe the house is haunted, they won’t go near it, not until these storm fronts pass. Then maybe they’ll find what they are looking for, but it won’t be until then that Müller is going to let the farmers finish moving the sheep. And it won’t be until then that Hans will be ready to sell his horses.”

He watches them, letting his words sink in, and Jester finds herself _looking _at Ansel properly for the first time. He’s older than her, maybe late twenties, with shoulder length blond hair and pale, freckled skin. He’s stocky—with the look of someone who may not be a farmer, but who has at least lived a life of manual labour—but there’s something else to him. He looks so much like he belongs here but there’s something _different _about him from the other people in town that Jester can’t quite put her finger on. 

“So how long are you saying this is going to take?” Beau asks. 

“With an inside investigation? A week at the very least,” he says. “But between you and me I think this town could do well with some outside investigation.” 

“So,” Beau says, leaning back in her chair. “The _real _question we have to ask ourselves is are we gonna hunt down whatever the fuck killed Hana Mündermann or are we going to cut our loses and _walk _outta here?”

It’s Caleb that speaks up first. 

“I… I don’t know about you all, but I want to stay,” he says.

“I agree,” Caduceus says. Nott nods emphatically. Jester gives him a thumbs up. 

“We can afford to spend a day or two tracking down whatever did this,” Fjord says. “And if it gives the town some peace of mind? That’s even more reason.”

Ansel smiles. 

“So, we’re doing this?” Caleb says hesitantly, eyes flitting from face to face, gauging their reactions. 

“Sure. For the good of the Empire, right?” Beau says, raising her empty tankard in a toast. There’s something more behind her voice—something not meant for all of them. Caleb stares at her for a long moment before raising his own glass. 

“For the good of the Empire,” he echoes. Beau grins and clinks her tankard into his.

“Even if they don’t want our help,” she adds, and then she looks down at her empty cup. “This probably would’ve been a cooler moment if we hadn’t just finished our drinks.”

“Probably,” Nott says, moving on from scavenging the foam from her empty ale to wiping it off Caleb’s. “But it was a nice gesture.”

“What’s the plan then?” Caduceus asks. 

“You will want to get there before dark.” Ansel nods to the windows, where afternoon light is still spilling through into the tavern. “Maybe dusk? The rain is supposed to start just after sunset.”

Five heads swivel in Caleb’s direction. 

“It’s 5:32,” he says. 

“So, we have time,” Beau says. 

They devolve into the nitty gritty of planning after that, detailing with Ansel the specifics of sneaking them out the back past the crownsguard detail without being noticed. After cleaning up their tankards and glasses and allowing Ansel to reopen the tavern to the evening patrons, they all begin to meander upstairs, planning to reconvene in an hour. 

After finishing her second glass of milk and waving goodbye to Beau, Jester turns to see if she can catch Caleb before he goes upstairs, but he’s already gone. Not one to be defeated, she turns her energy to Ansel, who is busying himself with wiping down the bar. 

“Thank you very much, Ansel,” she says, skipping up to the bar. “I’m sorry that we lied to you and stuff yesterday.”

“It is understandable,” he says. “The north isn’t always the best place for… interesting people.”

“Oh,” Jester croons. “I think you are very interesting!” 

He laughs. “_Danke_, Jester.”

“How much did you overhear, though? Really?” She asks, taking his good mood as an opportunity to press further. “_Really_ really?”

Ansel smiles. There’s something behind it—not malicious but knowing—Ansel has an air of someone who knows more than he lets on, and Jester has known enough people with that disposition to be a little wary. “Common is not my first language,” he says. “It’s hard to keep up with your speech all the time.”

So, she gives him a sly grin back. “That’s not a real answer.”

Ansel holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t hear anything that is going to change my mind about helping you,” he says. “Let us leave it at that.”

Jester narrows her eyes and gives him a once over. She doesn’t think he’s lying. He’s odd but he’s kind, and something in her gut tells her he’ll at least hold his word for tonight. She nods. 

“Okay.” She turns to go but looks over her shoulder right before she meets the stairs. “But you should know… we can be very scary when we want to be, Ansel.” 

He smiles. “I do not doubt it, Jester. See you tonight.”

The afternoon slowly fades away and the people of Blumenthal, slowly and surely, retreat into their homes. A storm rolls in from the south, casting grey light into the sky, and in the three small rooms above the bar in the Fair Lady, the Mighty Nein wait for dusk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of talking in this one! Sorry if dialogue isn't your jam, but hopefully murder is!!
> 
> Also can someone please tell Mr. O'Brien to stop making Caleb do that breathy stutter when he's upset because it's really hard to write.


	3. trace their faces in the wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _But I smell their blood,_  
_My fingers trace their faces in the wood._  
_I hear their voices somewhere in my bones,_  
_I feel them sing along when I'm alone._  
  
— "The Crooked Kind", Radical Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which the ermendrud house is definitely not haunted. 
> 
> Another Jester POV because mother... I love her... but we'll be back to the Boy next time.
> 
> Thank you for all your comments!

The warm tones of dusk begin to settle in the sky over Blumenthal, spoiled only a little by the looming spectre of the oncoming storm rolling in from the south. By the time the Mighty Nein sneak out of the Fair Lady, the first clouds of the storm are flitting low over the southern end of the valley, and the added cover casts deep shadows over their trek into the fields. 

Caleb leads them silently down the farm roads they had entered town on. As they walk, they pass the sheep fields, now holding a far smaller amount of livestock.

After a while, Caleb turns off onto a winding side road, saying nothing.

Trees begin to rise on either side of the lane as they trek deeper into the woodlands that border the valley floor. In the uncomfortable silence, Jester listens to the branches knock together in the slowly intensifying winds that whip through them.

She shivers and pulls her cloak tighter.

They don’t see another house for almost ten whole minutes before they reach Caleb’s, but the scarcity of the properties isn’t what makes Jester’s heart drop into her stomach. No. That honour goes to the house itself. 

At the end of the lane, the corpse of a childhood home sits in the shadows of dusk.

Jester had seen burned buildings before. She remembers Alfield, on the night the gnolls came, with pillars of flame ripping through shadowy husks of buildings. She remembers the tired remains of the Brenatto Apothecary, picking through the charcoal and cinders by hand with Nott, looking for life that wasn’t there.

But this reminds her of something else.

When Jester was seven, a foreign ship from the west had run aground in the reef at the edge of the harbour in Nicodranas, unfamiliar with the hazards of tropical waters. She had seen it from her window, all torn sails and akimbo masts, sprawled against the crystal blue sky like sinking spider legs.

It had been a rather large vessel and port authorities hadn’t been able to remove it, so instead they had sailed out on a handful of little rowboats and detonated the shards of the ship that broke the water’s surface, sending every piece of the once proud vessel into the maw of the reef. After a time, the ship had become part of it. She never saw it herself, but she heard stories. She heard that the corals and seaweeds has begun to creep and crawl over the salt crusted wood of the broken boat, and that the colourful fish that made their home in the Coast’s warm waters had begun to happily populate all its nooks and crannies. 

Nature had taken it and, looking at the gutted wreck of Caleb’s childhood home, Jester thinks She’s taken this, too. 

The wind blows through the tall trees around the property, filling the air once more with the rustling of leaves and the eerie knocking of branches. 

“I’m… I’m sorry, Caleb,” Fjord says, putting a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “This… isn’t a great place to revisit. I’m sorry you have to.”

Caleb shakes his head. 

“It’s alright,” he says softly. “It is never truly far.”

The six of them stand there for another few seconds, just watching the house sit silent and dark amongst the greenery.

The area is big—way bigger than the Chateau, even if the house itself isn’t as large. The blackened bones of the homestead sit in the centre of a large lot, surrounded by swathes of wildflowers and grasses, and bordered beyond them by towering trees. Jester can even see through the house a little, through to low, rolling fields of lupines that stretch far back into the distant forest. 

“I can feel the Mother here,” Caduceus says. Caleb and Fjord look openly startled. 

“Like she’s _here _here?” Fjord asks.

“No.” Caduceus starts forward towards the gate. “But I see her work here—in the reclamation of this place.”

“Reclamation…” Caleb repeats, voice wispy and tired. 

Caduceus pushes gently through the rickety gate, which squeals on its hinges as he does. He wanders slowly into the overgrown wildflowers that entrench the house, and makes it only a few yards before kneeling down. 

“What is it?” Caleb asks, slowly approaching Caduceus’s side. The rest of the Nein follow.

“Mountain mallow,” he replies, rolling a pink blossom gently between his fingers. “They grow in great numbers after fires. The burned soil is… better for them.”

“I didn’t know there were plants like that,” Caleb murmurs. 

“Oh, all kinds of things find life after a destruction like this,” Caduceus says. “It’s all very cyclical. It’s nice.”

Caleb says nothing, and Beau seems to take that as an opportunity to leap back into action. 

“Me and Boy Wonder are gonna investigate the backyard,” Beau says, slapping Caleb hard on the shoulder. “You all divide up the rest of the house.”

Nott looks worried. “Are you two going to be okay on your own?”

“Yeah! I can punch ghosts, remember?” Beau flexes. “You stay here in case anything is locked.”

Nott doesn’t look entirely convinced. “But what if it’s like, a wolf or whatever?”

“I can punch those too,” Beau deadpans, and then she grabs Caleb roughly by the arm and tugs him away, quickly enough that it’s all he can do to give them a small wave before the two of them disappear into the evening. 

“That was a quick exit,” Fjord says. “I’m getting the impression she’s more upset about being here that he is.”

Nott grunts. “We were here yesterday but… that sorta seemed final, you know? I don’t like being back.”

“Fair enough,” Fjord says. “I guess the quicker we scope it out the quicker we can leave.”

With that, Fjord’s eyes flash a brief, soft white, and he blinks a few times as if clearing away water or dust. His magic briefly fills the space around him.

Everyone’s magic has a unique signature that other spell-casters can come to recognise. Jester has spent a long time observing her friends, observing their magic, and she concluded a long time ago that she loves them all. 

Jester’s own signature is sweet, like candy and molasses and cinnamon. It fills the space around her when she summons her spiritual weapon; the oppressing flavour of burnt sugar and spice. It caresses that which it encounters with a playful touch. It is kind. 

Caduceus’s magic is kind, too, but it is gentle where Jester’s is loud. He has magic like a garden; a motley blend of spices and herbs that weave into evocative, vibrant palettes of sensation. His magic wafts, like incense or a breeze through the leaves, and though Jester never saw the Blooming Grove, it’s what she imagines it is like. 

Caleb’s is hot, like fire. It is more violent, snapping and crackling on the tongue and ears and eyes like thrown sparks when it touches another, but Jester wonders if he can wholly dislikes it because it is violent but it also smells of fragrant woodsmoke and earth, and that’s not all that bad. 

Nott doesn’t use magic that often, but hers is the one Jester looks forward to the most. Nott’s magic is contradictory; sometimes feeling like a fresh breeze on the skin or warm hands and carries the scents of fresh baking, but other times it’s sharp and hot on the tongue like acid. When she casts her illusions or disguises herself it’s anyone’s guess what the signature will say, and it’s a game of which Jester always enjoys the outcome.

Fjord’s has changed along with him. For a long time, the air would crack and burst with the smell of the briny ocean when he cast his spells or summoned his sword; Jester would be able to catch the faint, tangy scent of seaweed on her tongue. And it was cold. So cold. 

Now it’s warm like the ocean in Nicodranas in summertime. It’s cold in a refreshing way, soft like a sea breeze, like fine sand and the sound of shells pressed to an ear. Fjord’s magic, second only to hers, is the one that makes Jester think of home. 

She likes it more than his old magic. She wonders if she should tell him that.

“No undead,” he reports, jolting her from her thoughts. “I think…? Sorry, I’m still feeling this new stuff out.” 

“I trust you, Fjord!” Jester says brightly. 

“I don’t!” Nott says. “I think we need to comb the house.” 

“Hold on a moment.” Caduceus looks up from where he’s still kneeling amongst the flowers. In the small window of time he’s had to do it, he’s someone managed to pull out a small metal bowl and a pack of herbs. He’s amassed a small quantity of plant life too, and he’s arranging in the bowl on the ground. It smells nice, but Jester can’t imagine what it’s for. 

“Do you know their names, Nott?” He asks. 

“Whose names?”

“Caleb’s parents.”

Nott’s eyes widen a little, even though she’s so very obviously the most likely person of the four of them to know the answer. She stutters for a moment.

“Oh, y-yeah,” she says, twirling a piece of grass between her fingers. “Una and, uh, Leofric? I think? Why?”

“Thank you,” He goes back to his little bowl of impromptu incense, arranging the herbs and mountain mallow neatly in the base of the dish. Nott hops nervously from foot to foot.

“You’re not… you’re not going to try and talk to them, are you?” She asks. “Because I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Caduceus says with a deep chuckle. “I’m just saying a little thank you.”

He lights the incense with a quick tap of his staff. The herbs begin to smoulder gently, sending a fragrant trail of pale smoke into the air. It’s picked up by the wind as it crests the tops of the long grasses and is carried away into the dusk sky. 

Caduceus smiles. “It’s polite to thank someone for letting you into their home.”

Jester doesn’t say anything, but she thinks a quiet thank you all the same.

The four of them decide to split up. Nott, the lightest of them all, zips upstairs to the half-missing second floor, while Caduceus skirts the front yard and trees that wall in the property. Jester and Fjord are left with the bulk of the house, which she decides immediately is the shittiest job. 

The Zemni Fields are so _alien _when she compares them to where she grew up. The house, or what’s left of it, is built in a much sturdier, simpler style that the houses back home. And even the _air _is different. The sky is greyer, the breeze colder, and the plants are strange and thin with leaves held tight to the branches and branches held tight to the trunks as if the trees themselves are fighting back the perpetual chill. 

She really can’t imagine growing up here, but the truth of it is that Caleb _had_. She wonders what his winters had been like. Had they been cold in this house? It’s hard to picture it as anything more than the blackened wreck she is walking through now, but at one point this had been a home for a couple and their child. 

She pictures the Chateau, with its soaring rafters and silky decorum, ruined in such a way. Would a passerby see it as just rubble? Or would they be able to see all the life and love that had lived and died inside its walls? She supposes this is something similar; There’s a home here she can’t see, where her friend grew up and was loved. 

And now it’s gone.

“I don’t like this, Fjord,” Jester says, delicately picking her way over a fallen, charcoaled beam. Fjord holds out a hand to steady her and she takes it gratefully, hopping onto the most sturdy-looking floorboard within range. 

“It’s pretty fucking dismal.” 

“It’s sad,” she says, staring at the fleeting snatches of surviving wallpaper stuck to the remaining walls. It has a flower pattern. 

“I had no idea that Caleb had something like this behind him, you know?” Fjord says. “With how long we’ve all been together I think I was starting to assume we knew most of what there was to know about each other.” 

“I don’t think you can know a person that much,” Jester says, gently pushing Fjord out of the way of a low-hanging rafter. “But it explains a lot.”

“Right?!” Fjord says emphatically. “Like, I knew he had a whole fire thing, but I never thought to ask _why_.” 

“I guess it’s sort of private.” Jester muses. They walk through a doorway into one of the rooms that backs out onto the yard behind the house. There isn’t much left of it, just a back door and a gaping hole in the wall and piles of refuse. But there’s a warped metal oven in the corner, so Jester thinks maybe it was the kitchen.

_People lived here, _Jester thinks,_ they made food here and ate together._

Her meals with her mother growing up had been some of the most exciting parts of her day. They were the times when they could talk without the spectre of work or prying eyes looming over them. They would eat in her Mama’s room, just the two of them, and then they would sing and do each other’s hair and Jester would fall asleep to stories of daring heroes and the fair folk. 

She wonders if it had been the same for Caleb. Had he relished in shared mealtimes as much as her? Is this room remembered as fondly by him as Marion’s study is by Jester? 

She and Fjord scour the room for any evidence of animals, as well as more… paranormal things, but Jester is pretty convinced Blumenthal’s ghost and/or vampire population is a fat zero at this point. 

Content with Beau and Caleb investigating the back, they walk over to an interior door and pull it open, stepping into a smaller room that’s mostly intact. While it’s picked clean of any perishables that may have existed there sixteen years ago, it is very clearly a pantry of some kind. It’s a little small, but the two of them fit into it easily, feet crunching on the remnants of ancient glassware and new vegetation. 

“Nothing in here,” Fjord remarks. He turns to leave, and Jester almost follows. That is, until she spots something in the corner near the floor. 

She drops to her knees, careful not to cut herself on any of the old pieces of glass she assumes are from broken jars. As she kneels down, she sees in more detail what had caught her eye: it’s a little carving, etched into the wood along the skirting board. 

It’s very low quality, reminiscent of the drawings Jester had drawn over her own walls when she was three or four, but it’s remarkably well preserved. It depicts a rough little house with two crude figures standing outside. One has scribbled lines on either side of their head, perhaps indicating long hair, while the other has big glasses scrawled across an otherwise featureless face. They’re holding hands, Jester thinks, in the roundabout what that the stick arms of a child’s drawing touching indicate holding hands. 

There’s another figure a little distance away. It’s a smaller figure, running—or at least moving in some kind of motion—towards a clumsy, confusing drawing of a four-legged animal Jester guesses is a cat. 

The material isn’t as burned here, but a cracking streak of charred wood cuts through the image, mauling the little creation of the child that used to live here like a scar. 

“Oh,” Jester says softly, running her fingers over the faded etching. Fjord crouches down next to her and, upon seeing the drawing, lets out a sigh. 

“Fuck.” 

Jester bites her lip. “You know, um… every time we go back to Nicodranas he always asks me if I want to spend more time with my mom?” She feels tears prick at her eyes and tries—tries _so hard_—to hold them back. She laughs weakly. “At first I thought he just didn’t want to hang out with me. Or… or he was trying to make me feel guilty for leaving her? You know? And I thought “Jeez Caleb why are you nagging _me _when _you _don’t hang out with your mom either?” And—”

Fjord makes a noise of protest. “Jester, that’s not—”

“I know, I know! I couldn’t have known, right?” She clenches her fist. “B-but… but he didn’t mean it that way at all. I think he just wanted me to have a chance at having what he lost, you know? How sad is that, Fjord?”

Fjord puts an arm around her shoulders. The embrace is a little awkward in the cramped space, but it’s not unwelcome. Jester deflates, leaning her head against his shoulder. 

“I hate this,” she says. He chuckles. 

“It hasn’t been the best day, has it?”

“Let’s kick the ass of whatever did this and get out of here.”

He laughs. “Now _that _I can get behind.”

The moment is interrupted by a shrill cry from the direction of the kitchen. “If you two are done messing around I found something actually useful!” 

Fjord rolls his eyes and helps Jester to her feet. The two of them emerge from the pantry to find Nott only a few feet away. She’s crouched down on the floor, trying to shift a fallen beam off a section of the floor.

“Let me get that, Nott,” Jester says. She takes Nott’s place as the goblin skitters aside and pushes. The beam, which she figures may have at one point been part of a large shelf, slides across the floor, revealing a patch of wood relatively untouched by the nature that’s been consuming the rest of the house. It takes Jester a moment to realise it’s a door. 

“What is that?” Fjord says, sauntering over. 

“I think it’s a larder,” Nott says, kneeling and rummaging through one of the side bags on her belt, eventually producing the worn leather wrap where she keeps her lockpicks. “It’s locked, but the lock is weird.”

She brushes some of the loose debris away from the trapdoor, making visible a small brass lock inset into the dark wood. 

“The lock is newer than the door is,” she explains. “_Way _newer.”

Jester bites the bullet. “How new?”

“After the fire.” 

With that, Nott slaps the leather wrappings down on the ground. She begins to undo the series of clasps, buckles, and ties that keep it all together. Jester and Fjord watch on patiently. 

Jester is consistently impressed by the sheer amount of shit Nott manages to keep on her person without looking laden down, but her thieves’ tools really take the cake. She watches as Nott carefully unfolds the heavy leather kit, revealing an array of tools tucked into specially crafted holsters across its interior. It’s not just picks, which had excited Jester the first time she had seen it. There are picks—lined up neatly and organised on the left hand side of the kit—but there’s also a set of bronze pliers, scissors with handles shaped like nesting doves, a set of three small mirrors on the ends of curved metal handles, a file, a pouch of chalk dust, a tiny hourglass filled with orange sand, and a very fine spool of thread. She doesn’t know what all the items are for, but it’s always an interesting window into Nott’s odd skillset. 

Nott doesn’t grab anything fancy, just two picks. She keeps speaking as she starts working the lock. 

“Whoever put this here installed it after the fire,” she says. “I can’t say for sure how long ago, but the heat from the fire would have warped the metal and this is too pristine.”

“What do you think it means?” Fjord asks. 

“Not sure. It’s probably not related to anything that happened this morning because let’s be real that’s _absolutely _just wolves… but, it’s weird. Right?”

“I’d say,” Fjord says, crouching down to watch Nott a bit closer. She twists the picks and there’s a clicking noise. Jester gets ready to celebrate, but then Nott makes a startled noise. 

“What?!” Nott screeches. She looks down at her picks with a betrayed expression. “It didn’t open!”

Fjord snorts. “Too hard for you, O Master of Unlocking?” 

Nott shoots him a death glare. “Fuck off.” She turns back to the lock, digging the picks in for another try. 

It takes approximately four seconds for the lockpicks to snap. 

“FUCK!!” Nott screeches, throwing the picks on the ground. Jester gives her a consoling pat on the back. 

“I believe I heard frustration?” The trio turn to see Caduceus standing in the doorway. He’s smiling his usual bemused smile. Jester grins. 

“Caduceus!” She greets. “We found a locked door!”

“That’s nice,” Caduceus says. He points over his shoulder. “I’ve checked the woods out front. Nothing undead.”

“Anything wolfy?” Nott asks.

“Maybe? It’s hard to tell. This place is very overgrown.” 

He holds out his hands and Jester sees he’s clutching a modest handful of the pink mountain mallow. He walks forward into the kitchen.

“I’d like to try something,” he says. “I’m wondering if this is enough of an offering to speak to the Wildmother.”

He looks to Fjord, who splutters. “W-what? You’re asking me?”

“Sure,” Caduceus says. “When I cast _Divination_ I have to make an offering of significance to the Wildmother. Usually I try to find rare plants and while mallow isn’t rare, I feel it may be… important to this place.”

“I guess there’s a lot of it here…” Fjord immediately looks intrigued. “What do you think she can tell us?”

“Yeah,” Nott pipes up, having packed up her thieves’ tools in a silent fit of disappointment. “No offense Deucey but if this is just a pack of wolves, I don’t think we’re going to need divine intervention.” 

Caduceus hums softly to himself for a second, staring past them through the collapsing wall into the back garden, where lupines swish gently in the wind. “Do you ever get a feeling about a place?” He says finally. “Instinct is perhaps a better word for it.” 

“I mean, it’s _pretty _creepy and really sad,” Jester offers. “You mean like that sort of feeling?”

Caduceus shakes his head, and for the first time in the conversation he looks genuinely troubled. “I feel like there’s more to this house,” he muses. “Something off that we haven’t been able to sense yet.”

They all have the sense to look incredibly uncomfortable. 

“It’s a burned down house,” Nott says finally, and Jester is momentarily taken aback by the matter-of-fact _bitterness _in her voice. “People… people died here. I’d say that’s “off” enough on its own without having to make it all… all fucking _spooky-ooky._”

She looks irritated at the implication, but Caduceus either doesn’t notice or doesn’t comment. 

“Maybe,” he says mildly. “But have any of you heard a single animal in the entire time we’ve been here?”

They all fall silent. The sun sinks lower and lower behind the mountains, casting eerie light through the dark trees. 

The wind rustles through the leaves. 

The branches knock together.

There is no other sound. 

Nott clutches her crossbow tightly to her side. Fjord and Jester share a glance.

“I think we should leave,” Nott says. “It’s getting late. We should get Beau and Caleb and head back to town. We don’t know how long Ansel can cover for—” 

There’s a sudden rustling and the sound of muffled voices from outside and the group turn to look. The backyard is pretty much entirely visible from the kitchen, as the entire back wall of the house is in a state of extreme disrepair and the back door has fallen from its hinges. The gang watch the grasses sway—hear the noises grow louder. Hands begin to drift to holy symbols and holstered weapons. 

But it’s just Caleb, in the end, stomping out of the tall grasses beyond the house’s crumbling back fence with an expression of raw fury simmering on his face. He’s followed closely by Beau, who is striding after him with much the same expression. She’s yelling as they approach. 

“Caleb! Don’t be stupid!” 

“I did not ask for your opinion, Beauregard!”

“And I wasn’t waiting for your fucking invitation,” Beau spits. Caleb is almost through the back door and inside the kitchen when Beau grabs him by the shoulder, pushing him hard against the doorframe. A little dusting of charcoal falls from above them. 

“Uh, guys?” Jester says. Their fights aren’t unusual, but Beau hasn’t made their spats physical in a long time. The two humans take no notice of her. 

“It is not _relevant_,” Caleb hisses. There’s a surprising level of venom in his statement, one Jester wasn’t prepared for, but Beau doesn’t so much as flinch.

“Bullshit it’s not.” She gets right up in his face and though he has at least an inch on her in terms of height, she positively towers over him. “We’re neck deep in enemy territory, Widogast. You’re asking these people—your friends—to put their _lives _on the line fighting your old crew and you won’t even talk to them.”

“I think they have a fairly good picture regardless,” Caleb says with a dry laugh. “Nothing I say will give them any new information.”

“It’s not about fucking information. They’re your _friends_, Caleb.” Beau’s words slip out through gritted teeth. “This is fucking _killing _you and they can all fucking see it!”

Beau points to the rest of the group, standing stock still in the ruins of the kitchen. Caleb’s eyes widen, as if he’s just now realising that they have an audience. He shrugs Beau off and stalks into the building. 

“Hey!” Beau yelps. “Get back here, I’m not—”

“Can you too chill the fuck out for two goddamn seconds?!” Fjord yells, startling the two humans into abrupt silence. “We leave you for ten minutes and you’re tearing each other’s throats out! What the fuck are you talking about?”

Caleb turns his back to Beau and begins to make his way towards the exit. “Beauregard has some opinions she would do best to _keep to herself,_” he spits. 

Beau scoffs loudly. “Oh, _fuck_ you!”

“Fuck you!” Caleb whirls around to face her, throwing his hands out wide in exasperation. “If you are so intent on the truth why not be the one to tell it? 

If Beau’s expression had been stormy before, it’s positively thunderous now. “Don’t you _dare _pretend to know a _thing _about what I will or won’t do.”

The sun sinks beneath the horizon. 

“Guys let’s just calm down…” Jester says, taking a step forwards.

Beau whirls around, coming face to face with Jester. But the her eyes widen and she’s looking at something else. Something over Jester’s shoulder.

“Oh… oh no…”

They follow her gaze, one by one, and when Jester sees it it’s as if all the air has left the room. 

There is a ghost in the kitchen, standing behind them by the far wall, gazing forward with unseeing eyes. 

It’s form wavers, blending with the world at the edges like watercolour paints. It is grey. It is looking right at them. 

Nobody moves to attack, which is weird. Where they’d normally leap into action at even smaller of a sign of danger than this, they all just start… backing up.

The woman is pale, and not just in a ghostly way. Her skin is pale and lightly freckled and her hair, even under the wavering grey sheen of her spectral form, is a fiery red colour, tied back in a long, loose braid. She’s a little bit on the thin side but has strong arms, the kind all farmers seem to have, and a firm line to her jaw. She’s wearing a simple woollen dress with an apron, practical and protective against the cold of the north.

Her clothes smoulder at the edges, licked by invisible flames. The ends of her wiry red hair burn. 

But the thing that really gets Jester about her isn’t her paint-smudge edges or her burning hair or the way her image wavers like she’s not all there… what _gets _Jester the most about the woman in front of her is how much she resembles her son. 

_“Verlassen,” _she says, almost a wail. Her voice is perfectly ordinary, but it still sends a shiver down Jester’s spine.

“We need to get the fuck out of here.” It’s Beau. Jester risks a short glance at her. She has a tight grip on Caleb’s shoulders and is trying to get in front of him—trying to break his line of sight. Jester can see that knot of tension in her back, accompanied by something she might call fear if she didn’t know Beau well enough to firmly say it isn’t.

Caleb just stares past her, eyes unseeing and all-seeing at the same time. He stares at the woman… at his mom… 

His mom, _oh Gods_… Jester looks back to the ghostly woman, who is staring at them with a stern expression that she realises, a little hysterically, she sees on Caleb all the time. They have the same line to the brow… the same narrow blue eyes… what was her name? Jester doesn’t think she’s ever heard Caleb say it, but Nott had said her name was Una. 

_Such a pretty name,_ Jester thinks uselessly. 

It had almost been _funny_. They had spent the afternoon hypothesising about the existence of ghosts here a way to make this backwater a little more interesting. Vampires… ghosts… anything to make a town with a total of three interesting things feel more entertaining. But it wasn’t funny now, not even remotely. Now it was _real_. 

The halfway burning woman screams.

_“VERLASSEN!”_ The word, foreign to Jester’s ears, rips through the night like lightning.

In an instant Beau dashes past Jester and she’s _dragging _Caleb behind her as she does. He has one hand clamped over his mouth and his other gathered tightly in Beau’s clenched fist and in the split-second Jester can see him he looks like he’s about to throw up. Does she blame him? 

Jester is jolted out of her thoughts by the sound of Caduceus mumbling next to her. She recognises the incantation for _Turn Undead_ immediately, and she turns back to the ghost of Caleb’s mother (_Caleb’s mother!_) as Caduceus unleashes the blessing. 

The air is filled with the faint scent of Caduceus’s magic; light, fragrant herbs and muted sandalwood, warm and inviting. Jester watches the faint ebb of the spell wrap around the ghost… and then pass through. The ghost remains standing, staring blankly. 

“Well that’s odd,” Caduceus mutters, saying “that’s odd” like it’s odd and not terrifying. 

“What do we do?” Jesters asks at the same time Fjord cries, “That didn’t work!?”

Jester throws up her hand, clutching the holy symbol at her waist, and desperately draws on the power of the Traveller, casting out a sickly-sweet barrage of _Turn Undead_ in the direction of the ghost. 

Nothing. Una just keeps staring.

Failed spells aside, it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to kick a single, measly ghost’s ass if they wanted to. It’s just that they_ don’t _want to; somewhere in the last few seconds they’ve all come to a silent agreement that they aren’t going to beat Caleb’s mom into her own floorboards with a giant lollipop. Turn undead, not destroy undead. 

It’s a weird sentiment. But what are friends for? 

“Let’s go,” Fjord says, and he starts running for the front door after the others. Caduceus grumbles. He looks mad in that way he does when something confuses him. Jester agrees with the sentiment — _Turn Undead _is supposed to turn the undead. This? This isn’t fair. 

For her part, Una doesn’t follow them out of the house as they retreat. She remains in the kitchen, disappearing from view as they back out of the gaping husk of a front door, not really looking at them as they go. 

Then she screams again, as if on cue. The same word:_ “VERLASSEN!”_

Caleb makes a choking sound. 

He’s on his hands and needs among the tall wildflowers, emptying the contents of his stomach into the dirt while Beau crouches next to him, holding his hair back. Nott stands guard, watching the house as the remaining three dash over to re-join the group. 

“Is she still there?” Nott cries. 

“Divine methods didn’t seem to work,” Caduceus reports. Nott looks confused, so Jester says, “Turn Undead didn’t do jack shit.”

“Is she following us?” Nott asks.

“I’ll have a look,” Fjord says. He turns to head back to the front door, and signals Jester to follow. “Jessie, flank me.”

Jester nods and the two of them pick their way quietly through the wildflowers. 

They reach the door and Fjord presses his back to the outside frame. The kitchen isn’t visible from this vantage point, blocked by what remains of the first-floor walls and the staircase, but the house is eerily devoid of noise. 

Fjord nods towards the staircase, and then towards the kitchen door at the end of the hall. “On three,” he whispers. Jester nods and quickly casts _Pass Without a Trace_, hoping that will at least have an effect.

He counts down and the two of them slip quietly into the Ermendrud house, footfalls magically softened by Jester’s spell. The zip to the staircase, take a moment to look around, then dash to the kitchen entrance. 

It’s empty. 

The ghost is gone. The night is silent once more. 

“Well,” Fjord says to the now vacant kitchen. “At least it’s not vampires.”

When they return back to the front yard with their findings the scene has shifted some. The rest of the group have retreated farther, out of the front yard and into the dead-end lane that they had taken to the house. In the dark, the trees that loom on either side of the path are even more imposing, knocking together in the gradually strengthening storm winds like bones. 

Caleb is still sitting on the ground. Beau is crouched next to him with her hand on his back. Jester is once again surprised at how quickly the two of them can jump from at-each-other’s-throats to being each other’s emotional support humans in no time at all. It’s kind of endearing, if maybe a little strange.

Fjord shakes his head as they approach, answering Nott’s unasked question. The goblin curses, and turns back to Caleb, running a hand through her mussed hair.

“What do we do now?” Caduceus asks. Fjord shrugs and Beau makes a seesaw hand gesture. “I suppose we head back?” She says. “We can try and look into this more tomorrow.”

“Something’s not right,” Caleb mumbles. He sits up, shivering.

Beau grunts. “You can say that again.”

“You’re not… _Nein_. That was… That was _not _my mother.” His voice is low and so much surer than Jester had expected.

“No,” Caduceus rumbles in agreement. “It was undead.” 

“But I checked when we arrived,” Fjord says. “I didn’t pick up on anything… wouldn’t a ghost leave some sort of residue or… something?”

“In many circumstances yes,” Caduceus confirms. “But there are exceptions to every precedent.”

“You’re wrong,” Caleb says hoarsely. 

They all turn to look at him now. He’s still on his knees in the dirt but he’s staring up at them with wide, frantic eyes. “It wasn’t… wasn’t her. It wasn’t her ghost.”

He grips his hair tighter in his hands and curls into himself, the moment of control seemingly gone. “She… that was not right. She’s not _right_.”

Jester kneels, lowering her face so she can catch a glimpse of Caleb’s panicked eyes through his hair. His gaze drifts to hers slowly and she smiles. 

_Be the cleric, _she thinks, _be the cleric. _

“What do you mean she’s not right?” She asks softly. 

He holds his hands out, curling his fingers shakily like he’s grasping for something. His mouth pulls into a thin line and his brow furrows, and it’s an expression Jester knows well—usually worn when arguing with Beau—that means he’s trying, and failing, to find the words for something. 

“It’s alright,” Jester says brightly. “We just… we want to help you, okay?”

Caleb huffs a small breath through clenched teeth. “I’m sorry, Jester, I can’t… It’s not…”

The gate creaks behind them. 

It’s their saving grace, in the end, that creaky old gate. They wouldn’t have noticed the beast without it. 

The Mighty Nein turn and watch a nightmare dissolve from the shadows.

The beast emerges from the tall grass, rising and rising and rising until it reaches its full height. It’s huge, large enough that it doesn’t so much leap the fence as it does step over it. Large black paws at the ends of thin legs pad forward in complete silence. Its fur is matted and black; a wild, coarse tangle that drapes over every inch of the creature’s sharp frame from its stark haunches to its bony ribs. It’s so dark against the unilluminated home behind it that it’s almost hard to see—if it weren’t for the teeth. The thing—wolf-like in its visage—bares a toothy maw at the gathered party, saliva gleaming and dripping from jagged white teeth. Its eyes burn red in the dim light. 

The beast growls, breaking the impossible silence. 

“_Definitely_ not a vampire,” Fjord says. 

The beast leaps forward and lightning cracks across the sky, illuminating for just a moment the ghastly form of their attacker; all claws and teeth and terrible eyes. 

The heavens burst over Blumenthal, and under the cold shadows of a storm the dark things of the southern forests begin their hunt. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck_we_are_under_attack.jpg
> 
> Certainly a lot of mystery being dug up huh? Lotsa CLUES? We're talking coincidense?? suspigeon? mother fucking, uh, contradictions??? Let's see where it all leads babes, because [selena gomez circa 2007 voice] everything is NOT what it seems.


	4. further from my widowed home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Further from my widowed home_   
_Take the road that sets into the sun,_   
_Waiting for my skin and bone to return_   
_And see what I've become._   
_Summer has not yet been here though my days are long._   
_Take me back to when the night was young,_   
_And another song was sung._
> 
> — I Will Remain, Matthew and The Atlas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Caleb commits to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
> 
> I was at KODE in Bergen last weekend and encountered the Blumenthal room, which is a big pretty room painted wall to ceiling with a bunch of naked folks who are supposed to symbolise trade between Holland and Norway. And I mean, like, on a practical level I knew running into Germanic words in a country that speaks a Germanic language shouldn’t be at all surprising, but I had just updated this fic and it was like getting slapped in the face upon entry.
> 
> So anyway, back to this shit!

It’s not her.

It looks like her, sure. It has her curly red hair and her blue eyes. It has the high cheekbones Caleb had inherited and the nose he hadn’t.

It looks like her, standing in the kitchen in the place she used to stand when she made _bretzen_, where he would hover around her ankles like a hummingbird, waiting for her to pick him up and set him on the countertop so he could watch her work.

It looks like her.

But the ghost in the house is not his mother.

It’s a stupid thing to be caught up on, especially when he’s very clearly about to die, but to be fair: he’s not the member of the Mighty Nein most well known for their ability to “stay in the moment”.

There is a dog the size of an elephant leaping at his face and all Caleb can think about is how _the ghost is not his mother._

“Move!”

With a short cry Jester tackles him and Beau with all the disproportionate strength in her body, sending the three of them tumbling into the wet vegetation on the side of the road. They hit the muddy ground as the thing comes flying over them. They do not die.

For a moment they are a tangle of limbs—alive but frustratingly vulnerable—and then Caleb’s aching form is all at once playing host to Jester’s sharp elbow and Beau’s well-placed kneecap as the two girls scramble to their feet.

There’s a pink flash and the smell of burnt sugar and Caleb hears the thud of Jester’s spiritual weapon hitting the ground. She swears, so he assumes she’s missed, but he can’t quite see through the muck and the haze.

There’s a ringing in his ears and he hears himself breathing as if from a great distance. So, he shakes his head violently and feels the layers of fuzz brought on by fatigue and shock slip away; sound becomes clearer, his vision sharpens a touch… he hears the sounds of battle and stands up.

This is a mistake. He moves too quickly and feels the uncomfortable pull as his centre of balance lags and he almost falls over again. The ringing in his ears gets temporarily stronger. He strains to focus his eyes.

He’s so fucking tired.

The creature is in front of him, engaged in close combat with his friends.

It’s a huge beast with the appearance of a giant black dog, covered head to toe in tangled black fur. Its form is bony and underfed, though it still stands an imposing ten feet tall at the shoulder. At least Caleb thinks it does; it’s hard to tell in the dark as the creature seems to blend oddly into its shadowy surroundings. It’s only in the brief light of his companions’ hurled spells that Caleb can see the beast in any detail—in the sliver of a bony shoulder illuminated by an eldritch blast, the impression of wound haunches highlighted by a spiritual weapon, or the brief, sickly shimmer across its face and claws from _Bane_.

He staggers backwards, up to the treeline, putting some distance between himself and the creature.

He blinks, trying once again to focus on the scene in front of him despite the ringing in his ears and the rain dripping from his hair into his eyes. He blinks.

Gods… he’s so fucking tired.

He plants his feet steady in the wet earth and raises his hand. He watches, or tries to watch, as Beau lands a leaping blow across the beast’s face. Its knees almost buckle, and it teeters for a second, claws catching clumsily on the slick ground.

An opening.

Caleb raises his hand, feeling the familiar sensation of pins and needles on his skin as the fingers blacken and flake and crack. He may not have much energy but doesn’t need much to do this.

For a split-second Caleb is aware of every single muscle, tendon, and blood vessel in his arm. He feels the energy in them spark and instantly draw into his palm, igniting the arcane tears in his flesh with orange flame before congealing in his hand and exploding forwards.

The _Firebolt_ is set loose and Caleb ignores the _tss tss tss_ of raindrops evaporating on his scalding hand in favour of watching the bolt fly. It briefly illuminates the road in an orange-tinted flash as it collides with the beast’s flank, burning through the lank black hair and the skin underneath and sending the smell of meat into the night air.

Beau leaps into Caleb’s line of sight and swings wide with her staff, aiming for the scorched patch Caleb has created but missing the beast by inches. She swears and it turns its glowing red eyes on her, snarling with a sound like thunder and rearing back. It almost seems to disappear in the shadows, and this is Beau’s undoing.

From nigh invisibility to stark clarity the beast leaps forward from the gloom, sinking sharp, glistening teeth into the meat of Beau’s shoulder and throwing her to the ground. It pins her against the mud, flattening the grasses mere feet from where Caleb is standing.

A guiding bolt slams into one of the trees behind Caleb, followed closely by an eldritch blast, sputtering wide into the night; missed shots against a target that seems to slip in and out of the shadows.

Beau takes a shuddering breath and Caleb’s blood turns to ice.

He raises his hands and draws on wells of power he knows will eventually run dry.

Five missiles burst from his fingers and curl through the air towards the beast, taking with them parts of his arcane reserves that he _feels_ leave his body with a rush of freezing cold at his core and the sound of snapping flames that colours his magic. Four of them find their mark, with one careening off into the thick, dark woods like an errant firecracker.

The beast howls and staggers, releasing Beau from its clutches long enough for her to roll her bleeding form into the long grasses and out of sight.

Glowing red eyes turn to Caleb.

It snarls, the edges of its strange, shadowy pelt becoming visible just long enough for Caleb to see the roll of its shoulders as it crouches to pounce on him.

He’s not about to let it, though. Because like it or not, Caleb Widogast has never hesitated to be a coward…

“RUN!” He hears Nott scream.

…Especially when given permission.

He dashes into the woods and doesn’t look back.

Caleb is not a fast runner; he never has been. He’s not _slow_, mind you, but he doesn’t have Fjord’s stamina or Nott’s speed or Beau’s agility. In a normal setting he couldn’t dream of beating them on foot without arcane aid and outrunning a beast such as this one would be more than impossible. But this is not a normal setting.

This is where Bren grew up.

Caleb ducks and weaves through the dark woods that border his childhood home with almost expert dexterity. He is only half conscious of where he puts his feet, relying instead on the muscle memory and subconscious knowledge of _the shapes of these roots_ and _the mosses that grow over hidden holes and ditches_ to prevent himself from falling while the other half of him tries to prevent a panic attack.

He’s vaguely aware that he’s running farther south, having been turned around in some odd way to now be heading deeper into the woods. He catches a glimpse of the burnt house zipping past to his left as he runs.

He can see through the semi-collapsed wall into the kitchen. The ghost is not there.

He’s not quite sure how he feels about that.

But there’s no time to dwell because he hears the beast snarl again and it’s _far_ too close for comfort. He swerves, weaving deeper into the woods. He can’t hear the beast’s footfalls, but he can feel its hot gusts of breath on his neck.

And then he falls into a stream.

For all his weird, sense-memory recollections of the Ermendrud property, Caleb hadn’t thought to account for the stream that runs beside his house on its way to join the main river. It’s not entirely his fault; in his childhood it had never been anything more than a small, insignificant trickle of water most of the time.

But sixteen years has made it a gully, and the torrential rain has made it a swift flow of icy water. Caleb tumbles down the short bank and lands on his hands in the riverbed, feeling the force jolt through his arms and hearing the sickening crack of bone as his left wrist snaps between his chest and a large stone. He gasps, biting back a full cry. On one hand he drags himself to his knees.

The beast stands at the edge of the bank, looking down with hellfire eyes at Caleb, sprawled prone in the gurgling stream and blinding rain. Caleb’s good hand comes up to desperately fish through his pockets, searching for the phosphorus necessary for a spell he knows he barely has the energy for.

But the beast doesn’t move.

Caleb lies frozen on his back in the riverbed, phosphorus lying unused in his fist, and just watches the monstrous dog watch him. It doesn’t move, it just stands at the bank, paws scrabbling at the lip of the gully and sending loose dirt tumbling into the stream. But it doesn’t move. It snarls down at him, red eyes flicking from his prone form to the water, rushing beneath him.

If Caleb didn’t know better he might say the thing looked scared.

It gnashes its teeth once more before its ears perk up, and it wastes no time in bolting off into the deeper woods, phasing back into the darkness as it does.

Caleb hears running soon after; the Mighty Nein chasing after the beast, and then there’s a rustling noise and Nott bursts out of the shadows.

She zips over to the edge of the gully.

“Are you okay?!” she squawks. Caleb doesn’t miss the way her eyes linger on the rushing water.

He grunts as he gets to his feet, gripping his broken wrist in his good hand and stumbling over to the bank. Nott’s attention pulls back to him, and her giant yellow eyes widen in shock as she sees the injury.

“Caleb!” she hisses. “What happened to your wrist!?”

“Fell on it.”

Nott leans down and attempts to pull him up the bank. It’s a clunky procedure, and he does most of the work, but eventually he’s lying on his back in the low brush, staring up through the dark leaves at the thick storm above them. Caleb sighs.

“What was that thing?” Nott asks.

“No clue.”

“It wasn’t a wolf, that’s for sure.”

Caleb forces himself into a sitting position, leaning over to cradle his broken wrist to his chest. He hisses through his teeth. The adrenaline is fading now, and he can feel the dull ebbs of pain coursing through his arm in stark clarity.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Where… where are the others?”

“They went chasing after the thingy… but, uh… Caleb?” Nott’s voice is small, oddly so. She’s speaking in a tone Caleb knows is reserved for when she has to ask him a hard question – one she thinks will upset him.

Judging by how tonight is going, she might be right.

_“Ja?”_

“There’s a ghost in your house.”

The ambience of the evening stretches between them. Seconds pass, but it feels like minutes.

Caleb’s chest constricts as he responds. “It is not my mother, Nott.”

“Then… like… like a cousin or something? She looked like you.” She shifts her weight from foot to foot in a little nervous dance, clearly not liking the implications of her own suggestion.

Caleb just shakes his head. “No… no it _looked_ like my mother, but it was not her. She was not right.”

Caleb cannot see well in the dark, but he feels Nott put a hand on his arm.

“What does that mean?” she asks quietly.

“She wasn’t—that was not what she was wearing that night.” There’s no one around to overhear them but he still whispers.

Nott inhales sharply. “Is… is that how ghosts work? Do you know? They… they wear what they were wearing?”

“I don’t know, But… but there is more than that.”

“What?”

“It is hard to explain but…” Caleb struggles to grasp onto a way to convey his meaning. Common is not his first language. He is of the Fields, and the language of his people is woven into his bones. Common is just a skin he wears, and he wears it well, but in situations like this? Ones so stressful and concerning so much of the past? The words tend to fail him.

“Your mother,” Caleb says. “Did she have… quirks? Odd or specific things she did?”

Nott looks caught off guard for a second. “Uh… Y-yeah… I guess?”

“What were they?”

Nott chews her lip thoughtfully for a moment. “Okay, well, she always wears brooches made from beetle wings…? On all days _except_ Harvest Close. On Harvest Close she wears this little, like, brass pin my aunt bought her from Zadash. It’s her fancy one.”

“What would you do if you saw your mother without her brooch? Or if you saw her at Harvest Close wearing the beetles instead of the brass pin?”

“Then I’d know something was off.” She seems to be getting what he’s saying.

“That is what this is like,” Caleb says, finding ground for what he’s trying to convey. “You have not seen your mother in how long?”

“T-two years…”

“But you remember that about her,” he says. She nods. “You remember her mannerisms and the way she dresses, because she is your mother—”

“And a child knows their mother,” Nott says sadly.

They slip into silence, listening to the brook below them.

“My mother never wore her hair like that,” Caleb says. “And she wasn’t wearing that dress and even if that’s not how ghosts work or whatever… she was still _wrong_. I can feel it.”

Nott nods slowly. “Okay,” she concedes. “So, it’s not your mother… what is it?”

“That I do _not_ know.”

“Well that’s our first problem, then.”

_“Ja.”_

“Y-you were arguing before, with Beau, right?” Nott upturns the statement like a question, even though it’s nothing of the sort. “Was that about what I think it was about?”

“What?”

“Your parents, Caleb,” she says dryly. “This isn’t… don’t be _evasive_.”

Caleb bites his lip in frustration and looks away from where Nott’s is standing in the dim light. She’s always been far too perceptive—and much better at digging into people than him—it’s something he has always admired about her, but right now it is preventing him from retreating.

He thinks he could lie to anyone else, but not to her. Never to her.

“I was,” he says. “She wants me to tell the others what I told you and her. She believes it to be… pertinent information.”

“Do you want to tell everyone?”

“I don’t need to, Nott. It doesn’t matter here.”

“I’d argue that it matters a fuckin’ lot, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re _hurting,_ and they can all see it,” Nott says sternly. “You’re exhausted! Beau’s stressed out! Jester’s worried out of her mind! Caduceus is going all mumbo jumbo, like, ‘there’s bad energy here… bluh’ or whatever! And Fjord’s just gonna keep asking you questions, and you won’t be able to dodge them forever!”

They’re quiet for a long time, listening to the steady rainfall and the gurgling of the stream. Caleb watches Nott glance over her shoulder a few times, obviously waiting for the rest of the party to return. He almost manages to change the subject—to ask if they should head after them—when Nott abruptly speaks.

“Why did you tell me?”

He blinks, taken aback. “W-what?”

“In Zadash,” Nott says simply, training her luminous eyes on him in the gloom. “You told Beau about your parents because you wanted to get into the library, but _I_ wasn’t offering you anything. I was just _there_. You told me though. Why?”

“I told— I told you because y-you are my friend, Nott,” he explains quietly. He can see where she’s going with this and doesn’t like it, but he can’t stop himself from talking. “At the time you…you were my only friend… You deserved to know.”

“I’m not your only friend anymore.”

He remembers that night. He remembers the unprecedented honesty he’d given to Nott. She _had_ deserved it, more than Beau had at any rate, and it wouldn’t have been right to keep her in the dark if he was illuminating himself to someone else.

And she’s right. She’s not his only friend anymore.

“What reason do you have for not telling them? What reason other than being scared?”

_None_, he thinks. He doesn’t say it, but he’s pretty sure she understands.

“It’s hard to let people in… to let people _see_ you,” she says softly, squeezing his arm. “I learned that back in Felderwin, Caleb… I didn’t want anyone to see me for who I was. But I let you… and my life has—”

Her breath hitches, and Caleb realises she’s crying. He raises a hand to console her, but she waves him off.

“My life has become so much _richer_ with you in it,” she breathes, voice pitching and wavering with tears. “All of you. You _saw_ me and you helped me! You helped me get my husband back… my _family_… you gave me my family and you made it even bigger and for that I am so, so _fucking_ grateful.”

He looks away from her, down at her hand, squeezing his arm gently as she speaks.

“Being seen is terrifying. I know that better than anyone,” she whispers. “But it’s the right choice. With people like this? It’s always the right choice.”

“My story is not so black and white as yours, Nott,” he mutters. “I am not a good person.”

“You need to let them decide that for themselves.” She gestures back into the darkened woods, where the sounds of voices are beginning to grow closer. “Nothing in the world is black and white. I know that, you know that, they know that. And maybe you did a bad thing, but you can’t use that to control how much people are allowed to love you. That’s not for you to decide.”

When he doesn’t say anything, she lets go of his arm and stands back a bit, eyeing the direction of the voices.

“I’m pretty sure I know what they’re going to say if you tell them.” Nott straightens up, swinging her crossbow into a more comfortable position on her shoulder. “But I’ll have your back anyway. No matter what.”

She smiles at him, all sharp teeth and glowing eyes, and he tries to smile back.

With that, Beau bursts out of the bushes.

“Caleb!? Are you okay!?” She runs to his side, closely followed by Jester, Fjord, and Caduceus, covered in blood from the bite on her shoulder. It’s been healed, but the blood stains are still there.

He nods, and Nott smacks him on the back of the head, pointing furiously at his wrist. “Oh, _ja._ I think I broke my wrist.”

Jester shoulders past Beau and crouches down next to Caleb. She places one hand on the symbol at her waist and the other, tenderly, on his wrist. A little jolt of pain blooms from the contact, but he bites it back with a wince.

“You had us worried, Cay-leb!” she says in her sing-song voice. Her eyes are glittering in the dark as she begins to cast her healing magic over his broken bone. The air is filled with the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg, and his skin tingles under her touch as the warm energy flows through his joints, snapping the small bones of his wrist back into place and sealing the breaks within them.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay! It’s probably pretty good that you ran, you know? That thing was nasty!”

“Is everyone alright? Where’s the thing?”

“Mhm!” Jester affirms brightly. “We’re all pretty tapped, I think, but Beau and you were the only ones that got hurt.”

“Sounds like us,” he mumbles. Jester laughs as she finishes her healing. She tugs Caleb to his feet by his newly healed arm.

“The “thing” got away,” Fjord says, answering Caleb’s second question. “Any idea what made it stop like that?”

“It’s… it’s odd, but I think it may have been the stream,” Caleb replies. He points down into the gully. “I fell in there. It could have easily attacked but… it looked wary. Then it ran.”

“The stream?” Fjord repeats. “Why would it be scared of—”

“The water,” Nott says suddenly. “I’ll bet it was the water.”

“Projecting?” Fjord teases. Nott scowls.

“It’s a perfectly fucking normal thing to be scared of, Fjord!”

Caduceus raises a hand. “I think Nott is right, but there’s a lot more we need to talk about,” he says. “We should do it somewhere else. It’s getting late.”

Nott squeezes Caleb’s hand subtly.

“We need to go somewhere else to talk,” she says. “Not the inn. I don’t feel like we’re totally safe there, no matter how nice Ansel is.”

The group murmurs in assent.

“Do you know anywhere we can go, Caleb?” Jester asks.

He nods.

“Then let’s get on it,” Beau says gruffly.

And that they do.

* * *

They do not head back to town.

Thunder booms overhead and the rain continues to pour, washing the muck from their clothes and the blood from Beau’s. Caleb counts the spaces between the lightning flashes and the thunderclaps and listens to, rather than watches, the brief but violent storm recede.

_Ein… zwei… _it goes.

They walk. Beau complains about the blood on her jacket.

_Ein… zwei… drei…_ it goes.

They walk. The ringing in his ears continues.

_Ein… zwei… drei… vier… _it goes.

They walk. The ghost in the house is not his mother.

They walk for quite some time, Caleb guiding the group silently across open paddocks and the occasional low fence towards the south-west stretch of the river, where the valley rapidly bottlenecks, and the forests pinch close to the riverside. There’s a farm there he knows will be abandoned, and even better; an old barn they can shelter in.

The Nein talk as they walk:

“What was that thing anyway?”

“I dunno.”

“Werewolf?”

“Not a werewolf, they’re much smaller.”

“Did your friends in Deastock tell you that?”

“For the _last_ _time_—”

Caleb lets it all fade out.

They walk for long enough that by the time they approach the old rusted gate to the property, the storm has calmed enough that shafts of faint moonlight have begun to peek through the low clouds.

The image the moons illuminate is a serene and—for lack of a better word—ghostly one. Soft silvery light spills over the fields of the abandoned farm, bringing to eerie life the swathes of wildflowers and brush that have grown in the place of tended fields over time. To their left, the river churns faster as the valley narrows. To their right, nestled amongst new and old vegetation, is the half-collapsed form of an old stone farmhouse.

Caleb forces the gate open and pushes it forward, tearing roughly through overgrown lupines and wild parsley.

The rest of the Nein take in the scene.

“What happened here?” Fjord asks, obviously talking about the ruined house. That’s two in one day, Caleb thinks dryly.

Blumenthal is very quickly becoming a town of former homes.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “The valley is narrow here, _ja?”_ and he points to the hills the rise beyond the treeline to their left and right, steep enough in places to be called bluffs.

“The rocks are unstable,” he explains. “There was a landslide before I was born that destroyed the farm buildings, so they foreclosed the property in case of, uh, more collapse. No one lives here, but…”

“But?” Beau says quickly, snagging onto his hesitation with almost desperate energy. She’s been on edge since the fight and he doesn’t blame her.

He waves his hand in a gesture he hopes is calming and not condescending. “I used to, uh… play here… when I was young. There should be a building down by the river we can rest in.”

“Okay then,” she says. “Lead the way.”

They don’t have to walk far, just down to the river, where the old barn leans at an odd, unsafe angle like its trying to catch its reflection in the passing waters.

The barn is wooden and old, covered in curling vines and overgrowth that tangles the old farming equipment littered around its interior. The roof isn’t entirely together, but it’s keeping the rain out fine so they’re not complaining as they enter.

The entire thing smells of grass and pollen and flowers, and it is entirely abandoned.

The Mighty Nein settle into the corner, where shafts of faded moonlight filter through the walls and ceiling and illuminate a pile of old sacks and grasses that look comfortable enough to sit on.

As soon as they are settled, Caleb throws up _Dancing Lights_, sending the orbs spinning in lazy circuits over their heads. They fall into uneasy silence…

And then Jester breaks it.

“Before we jump into everything, uh, Caleb? Back at the house you said that the ghost wasn’t right, that it wasn’t your mom…”

Caleb sighs; he’d known this would be her first question.

“I do not believe that was really the ghost of my mother.”

“So, she was what, then? An aunt?” Beau offers in a weird echo of Nott. “She sure as hell looked like you, man.”

He shoots Beau a glare. “She _looked_ like my mother. Very much so. But she—she wasn’t wearing her hair right—”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Beau puts her hands up, looking confused. “She wasn’t wearing her _hair_ right!?”

Caleb clenches his fists. “This is difficult to explain… I never saw her wear her hair loose like that. It was either out entirely or tied tightly back...” he desperately tries to scramble for a way to make them understand. “She was… I am particular, _ja?_ I like… order to things—organisation and routine—she was like that, too.”

No one is outright arguing with him, so he continues.

“M-my… my mother… she had—had a, uh, she was a _particular_ woman. She always wore her hair in certain ways… she a-always, uh, dressed differently… depending on where she was… what time of the year. She never wore shoes inside. She kept her wedding ring on her right hand because it was too big for her left… she…”

He realises he’s rambling, and snaps his mouth shut quickly. In the ensuing silence, he clears his throat and starts over.

“The thing in that house, _whatever_ it is, it is not my mother. There are too many things that stray from routine.”

Beau interjects first. “You expect us to disregard the whole-ass ghost in that house because it wasn’t wearing the right _outfit_?”

“Yes.”

He will not mention the dress. He will not mention that it hadn’t been what she had worn on the day he killed her.

“Well, we didn’t sense anything undead in the house,” Caduceus says.

“You didn’t?” Beau looks incredulous. Jester and Fjord shake their heads.

“And Turn Undead didn’t work either,” she admits. “It would make sense if she wasn’t a ghost.”

Fjord speaks up, his train of thought formulating slowly but surely. “If it were an illusion… or a creature pretending to be a ghost… that would explain why I didn’t sense it.”

Everyone nods in agreement and Fjord looks relieved, like his call back at the house hadn’t been for nothing.

“So, it’s not your mom?” Jester asks, turning to Caleb.

He shakes his head. “No. But it is something that looks like her.”

“I can’t even begin to guess what that could be,” Fjord says. “Have we ever run into something like that.”

“Those mirrors under Baxozzan,” Caduceus offers. “But, hm… that might have been specific to that one place...”

“We shouldn’t rule it out.”

“Is this a bad time for me to mention the door?”

“What door?” say Beau and Caleb simultaneously.

Nott shuffles closer to Caleb, having just spoken. “There was a trapdoor built into the floor of the kitchen,” she says. “Where does that lead? Is it a cellar?”

Caleb thinks about it for a moment and then nods. “I know the door, _ja._ It leads to a root cellar.”

“Was… was it locked when you lived here?”

“No…? It was inside, so… _nein_. We did not need to lock it. Why?”

“It was locked when I found it today,” Nott explains. “Still is, actually; I couldn’t open it. But whatever. The point is it’s _way_ too pristine of a lock. Metal like that would have warped in ma— in fire, right?”

Caleb’s gut twists at her slip even though no one else in the group appears to have caught it. But he did, and she did. She winces through her swift recovery and shoots him an apologetic glance.

_Magic fire,_ she’d begun to say. _Metal like that would have warped in magic fire._ It burns hotter, after all. That is one of the first things he’d taught her about magic.

Caleb flounders, and Beau dives into the opening.

“So, it was added afterwards… do you think someone’s living down there?”

Fjord clicks his tongue impatiently. “Okay, let’s not jump to conclusions.”

Nott, as always, ignores him. “What if they’re guarding something?”

“The dog?”

“The dog _and_ the ghost.”

All eyes are on Nott now. She shrugs.

“What could be down there that needs to be guarded?” Caduceus wonders.

“I don’t know, but it apparently warrants an illusion that looks like a dead chick—sorry Caleb.”

“Or some kind of monster… and maybe the dog, too?”

“If it’s an illusion it would have had to be someone who knew Caleb’s mom – sorry, what was her name again?”

“Una,” Caleb supplies quietly. He’s barely paying attention to who’s speaking, but it’s Fjord that asks this question. He latches onto that, tries to pull himself into the present, tries to follow along.

“It would have had to be someone who knew Una well enough to recreate her image,” Fjord continues. “Not family, if it’s as inaccurate as Caleb thinks, but realistic enough to be recognisable as her.”

Beau scoffs. “That’s assuming it’s an illusion. If it’s a creature like those mirror things in Baxozzan then it coulda just used magic or something.”

“I’ve never heard of magic like that,” Caduceus says. “It probably would have had to at least seen her once, no matter what it is.”

“And that still doesn’t answer why they’re there.”

“Yeah! Are the dog and the ghost both guarding the place? Were they put there by the same people?”

“And why?”

Jester’s voice cuts through the medley of everyone else’s “What… what if it was arson…? What if whoever killed them put it there, and—Woah! Caleb?!”

Caleb doesn’t know when he had gotten to his feet, but he is on them now, fists clenched into white-knuckled grips, nails digging into his palms, eyes squeezed shut. The ringing in his ears is so much louder. 

The _Dancing Lights_ flicker.

It’s too much. It’s too fucking much.

“—sorry,” Jester is saying. “That was kind of rude, I didn’t mean to—”

_“Nein.”_ He wrenches his eyes open, forcing himself to look at the faces of his friend, all turned towards him in various shades of confusion, concern, and apprehension.

“We can… we should go back to the inn,” Nott says, desperately trying to recover whatever peace he’d just shattered. “It’s getting late anyway and we’re all tired—”

“No.”

“Caleb,” Beau warns. “Are you—”

“I need to do this now or I am not going to do it,” he says darkly. Beau nods and stays sitting down. Nott eyes them both nervously, but stays seated too.

Jester speaks before anyone else can. “What are you talking about, Caleb? Was it what I said? Because I’m really sorry.”

Caleb shakes his head furiously, because on top of everything else he absolutely cannot let Jester think anything he is going through is her fault. She doesn’t deserve that.

He is tired and hurt and broken along every jagged edge of himself. He’s back in the place he was born, in the place he killed the two people he loved the most in the world, and he’s somehow the only person in the group that hasn’t noticed how much it is pulling him apart at the seams to be here.

He has driven himself to the precipice of disaster, and he is tethered to an uneasy calm by a weak and worn string. He is on the edge of collapse.

_Being seen is terrifying — but it’s the right choice. _

Nott’s words rattle around in his addled head. So loud. But maybe she’s right. Maybe this will be release.

_My life is so much richer with you in it. _

He cannot fathom how telling a woman who loves her mother more than the world itself that he was the one that murdered his own will make him richer.

He cannot fathom how telling a man with more family than he can count and a home he’s desperately trying to save that he burned both his family and home to the ground will make him richer.

He cannot fathom how telling a man who never had the opportunity to _have_ parents, let alone lose them, that he killed his own will make him richer.

But they are his friends, and maybe they deserve to know.

“I am going to tell you all something that should… give context to… things,” he begins, and the group is silent as he sinks back into a sitting position on the floor. “It is something Nott and Beauregard already know and, uh, have known… for some time, but I never found a time I believed it was, uh… relevant to tell you all.”

Fjord opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but Caduceus interrupts him with a hand on his shoulder. He shakes his head at Fjord, and nods to Caleb to continue. 

“I am going to tell you something and then we can go back to the inn and in the morning, if… if you…”

He trails off under a scrutinous glare from Beau, who seems to know exactly what he had been about to say. _If you want, I can leave… if you want, you can leave me…_ he’s not sure which one would be worse.

He takes a deep breath and snaps Frumpkin into existence in his lap.

“I want you all to know that I care for you a great deal. All of you. You are helping me more than you are maybe aware by coming back to the Empire and… and I cannot in good conscience let you go on without telling you the kind of person you are helping.”

He buries his hands in Frumpkin’s fur, feeling the gentle, comforting warmth beneath the pelt and willing it to thaw the biting chill growing inside him.

“I need… I need you to see me for who I am. I need you to understand me and understand the culture of sin that made me who I am.”

He’s tired.

“Nothing I have told you about myself is a lie.” There’s a joke about his name in there somewhere, but the mood has soured too severely to still have room for something that jovial. “But I have not told you everything.”

He’s so tired.

“I told you that I failed my training, _ja?_ That there was a test to pass to be trained as _vollstrecker_, and I failed?”

The group nod, slowly, cautiously.

He’s so tired of _this_.

“I still did the test,” he says, voice no more than a breath.

Fjord shoots a glance at Beau, who still has her eyes locked on Caleb.

“You wanted to know how I knew the ghost wasn’t my mother. It’s because I know what she looked like on the day she died, and it was _not_ like that.”

_Just get it over with,_ he thinks.

“I know that because I am the one who set fire to my house,” he says, and he makes the mistake of making eye contact with Jester, whose expression melts from wariness to unbridled horror in an instant. “I killed my parents.”

In the distance, the storm throws thunder through the sky. 

* * *

_“Bren! Where are you?”_

_From his vantage point under the porch, Bren watches his mother’s feet descend the steps into their backyard. She’s barefoot, which means she’s just come out from inside. _

_The kitten he’s struggling to hide under the porch meows pitifully. _

_“Shh!” He whispers frantically. “Don’t make noise or she’ll hear you.”_

_The cat narrows her eyes at him and meows again. Bren makes a little indignant squeak. _

_“Bren!” Una calls again, and with one last, desperate look at the little she-cat Bren wiggles towards the side of the porch, where a loose piece of netting can be pried back to let him in and out with ease. _

_He’s been feeding the cat under the porch for the last three days after discovering her on his daily search for chicken eggs. She had been starving, he thinks, because he could see her ribs beneath her fur. He’s not quite sure what cats eat, but he’s been hoarding some of the dried mutton his mother puts in his lunch bread, and she seems to like those well enough. _

_Bren wiggles through the gap, tumbling gracelessly into the soft grass and getting to his feet. His mother is turned around, shouting his name into the lupine fields beyond the back fence, so he knows if he just makes a little bit of noise he can make it look like he’s just run in from the woods. It’s the perfect ruse; he’s very proud of it. _

_“Mutti!” He says and begins to move forward into the yard. _

_“Ah!” Una whirls around, her long woollen skirts twirling with the motion. She plants flour-dusted hands on her hips and gives him a capital-L Look. “Where have you been, little one?”_

_“The stream,” he lies. _

_Una smirks and lifts a hand to his face. In the sunshine her hair, so much like his, flares orange at the wispy edges of her tight braids like great curls of fire. She is appropriately warm, and she smells like fresh baking. _

_“And where did you get these scratches?” She inquires, thumbing a spot on his cheek that the little cat had scratched at earlier. The sting makes him wince. _

_“Uh…” He hadn’t thought through his lie very well. He’s not as proud of it anymore. Una smiles._

_She crouches down to eye level and takes up his little hands in her large ones, squeezing them gently. “Did you know that you chew your lip when you lie, my love?”_

_“I do not!” He protests. His mother only chuckles._

_“What were you doing, truly?” she asks. “I promise I won’t be mad.”_

_“There’s a cat…” he says, resolve melting like butter in her warm hands. “She’s under the porch and just a baby and hungry looking and I fed her my lunch meat and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but I was worried ‘cause Oma said Opa drowned the kittens he found in their attic and I didn’t want you to_—_”_

_Una puts up a hand. “Slow down. What’s her name?”_

_“She… she doesn’t have one.”_

_“Oh, you must name your pets, Bren,” she laughs, her clever blue eyes sparkling like sunlit water. They’re so much like his. “How else will they know they’re yours?”_

_Bren feels his heartbeat flutter and stutter as her meaning sinks in. “W-wait… I can keep her?!”_

_“I am sure your father will be happy to hear we have something to take care of the mice,” she reasons. “But you must pick a name for_—_”_

_“Frumpkin!” He doesn’t even wait for her to stop talking before he shouts the name. _

_Una looks surprised for a second before devolving into a fit of snorting laughter. Bren pouts, but she cups his cheek in her hand and brings him forward, kissing him on the forehead. _

_“Oh, Bren,” she laughs. “What a perfect name!”_

_“Mean it?”_

_“I mean it, my love.” She stands up and dusts off her apron. “Now go bring your Frumpkin inside; I’ve made bretzen.”_

_Bren doesn’t need to be told twice. _

_“You must always be honest, little one,” Una says later, kissing the crown of his head as they sit together in front of the fire, Frumpkin curled lazily at their feet. “If we lie too much, we become our lies, and then nobody will ever be able to know us for who we truly are. How can people love us if we are not ourselves to them?”_

* * *

The telling is easier the second time, in some ways. In others it is much harder.

It doesn’t take as long. This isn’t him laying his life out for the first time to relative strangers, this is him filling in a final blank space in a tapestry his _companions_ then _friends_ then _family_ have been weaving on their own for months.

He doesn’t need to give any preamble. He doesn’t need to talk about his Soltryce acceptance or being plucked by Ikithon or the long and terrible abuses he suffered under him, because those are known things. He talks, instead, about his parents… about nationalism… about _sin_.

“We didn’t… we didn’t come home often but, one weekend, when we were supposed to go to Trent’s house, he allowed us to go home instead and I… I was _ecstatic_.”

He tells them about how he’d missed his father, who had finally returned from a tour in the military. He had been eager to see him, to show him the man he’d become in the time both of them had been gone.

And then he tells them about overhearing plots of revolution, about tearfully and gravely recounting a trio of identical tales of parents and treason. How they’d reported to Ikithon and he’d told them, in the stern and careful voice of a leader, that they must do what is right for the Empire. He tells them about how he’d listened.

“We met here,” he says, gesturing to the barn. He watches five pairs of eyes dart curiously around the room, and then snap back to him. Beau’s gaze is steely. “We didn’t want to be overheard.”

He tells them about how they did it, the order of the crimes, recounting for a second time the precise details of the worst night of his life. The whole time he fights the urge to meet their eyes, staring instead at a piece of wire in his hands, which he has twisted so tight and wild his fingertips are beginning to rub raw on the metal. He doesn’t care. He is so tired.

“We pushed a cart up against the front door and barred the back one,” he says. “And then we stood back and I… I set—”

He chokes on the tremble in his voice and its only then that he realises he’s crying, which is odd. He hadn’t done that last time.

But then again, these people hadn’t meant anything to him last time.

Months ago, the first time he had told this story, Beau had been one step above a stranger. He hadn’t even liked her; his confession had been a means to an end and sure, looking back, he can accept that it’s the moment he had started to trust her… but that hadn’t been the intention.

Nott? Nott had been different. That had been a courtesy, a single uncharacteristic act of honesty towards a woman he owed his life to. It’s been so long, and she’s become even more important to him since.

But here he is with people he has come to love despite every instinct in his awful being telling him not to. Five people he thinks, in a thought that simultaneously chills and warms him, that he might be willing to die for.

That is the fact of the matter. The group has changed in the time between tellings. At one point they had been everyone plus Nott and Caleb, but now they’re just everyone. He can no longer pack up and leave in the night with Nott, mere memories to these people. No. He can’t run. He doesn’t want to run.

Running had stopped being an option a long, long time ago.

“I set the house on fire,” he manages to say. The words keep tumbling out. “And I was so sure… so sure it was right… until I heard them screaming inside… and then all at once I _wasn’t_… and…”

He grips Frumpkin’s fur tight, willing the fey cat not to mind. He hates doing that, but he’s losing himself and he needs to hold on to something.

“I broke after that,” he says. “They took me away and… I don’t remember much but I was eventually placed in an asylum near the capital.”

He pauses and lets the silence and moonlight seep into his bones. He listens to the crickets and the wind and the river, churning in the distance. He doesn’t speak for a long enough time that Beau thinks he’s stopped.

“You need to tell the rest,” she says.

He doesn’t say anything yet; he needs to be steadier. This is an important story and it needs to be told right.

“Tell them or I will,” she says. It’s gruff but there’s a telling desperation colouring her voice.

“_Beau_,” Nott warns. At some point in the telling she had migrated to his side, placing a hand comfortingly on his knee. Her voice is shrill in his ear, but not unwelcome. Never, _ever_ unwelcome.

“I was there for eleven years,” he says. “In the end, a woman, another patient, healed me. I think it was in much the same way Jester and Caduceus can… and she—she removed the fake memories that Trent had placed in my head of my parents talking about revolution.”

The words find their mark like one of Nott’s crossbow bolts. Fjord swears under his breath and looks away and Jester—face wet with tears—brings a shaking hand to her mouth. Caduceus watches on, eyes more calculating than Caleb has maybe ever seen them.

“That is… that is it... more or less,” he says. “After that I ran away and tried to stay hidden. That was, uh, a little over five years ago.”

There is silence.

He finds stability in Beau’s gaze, because there’s nothing in her eyes he hasn’t seen before. He finds it in Frumpkin in his lap, and in Nott’s tiny hand clenched around his.

That uneasy silence is back, and in it he can hear Jester sniff. He sees her wipe her hand across her face with clumsy abandon, not caring how she looks right now.

“The memories were fake,” she says quietly. “You were tricked, Caleb.”

She’s still crying, he can hear it in her voice and see it on her face. _You did that, _a voice in his head says, _you made Jester Lavorre cry. She’s the nicest person you’ve ever met in your whole miserable fucking life and this is how you repay her?_

“I was,” he says, nodding slightly. “But it was my decision in the end. I was not forced into anything.”

Beau barks a laugh and he narrows his eyes at her.

“I’m not sure that’s _entirely_ true,” Fjord adds. “From what you’ve told us about Ikithon’s shit it sounds... controlling.”

“You always have a choice, Fjord, you know that better than anyone.” He catches the half-orc's eye, willing him to understand. “If not for your choices, you would still be tied to a god at the bottom of the ocean, _ja?”_

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No. It is not. You stood up to a demigod. I could not even stand up to one man. I did not _want_ to.”

“Caleb—”

He shakes his head.

“I have had this argument before,” he says coldly. “I do not wish to have it again. Not now.”

“You have a very interesting concept of blame, Mr. Caleb,” Caduceus says abruptly. The group stills, turning in unison to watch the firbolg, previously silent through the entire exchange, lean against his staff with a concerned expression.

“Perhaps I do, Mr. Clay,” Caleb says carefully.

Caduceus looks more troubled than Caleb has seen him in a while, maybe ever. It stirs something in him, something that feels uneasy. He had feared Jester’s reaction — dreaded Fjord’s — but he hadn’t given much thought to what Caduceus might think of him. Not as much, at least.

“C-Caduceus?” Jester gets his attention in a small voice.

“I am… angry,” he says. “Very angry.”

“At who?” Beau asks, because that’s the million-dollar question.

“Oh, I’m angry at a lot of people,” Caduceus rumbles. “Mostly Trent.”

“Fair ‘nuff,” Beau grunts.

“We’re all angry at Trent.” Caleb’s own voice surprises him, weak but sure. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to keep it together this long. "He is an easy person to be angry with.”

“But you’re angrier with yourself, in some ways, aren’t you?”

Caleb hates this. He hates being on the receiving end of Caduceus’s uncanny ability to read a person like a book. Maybe that’s why he didn’t think too hard on Caduceus’s reaction before. Maybe he already knew, deep down, that Caduceus had probably seen the echoes of his sins as they are in his current self and had judged him accordingly.

“That’s an interesting way to look at fault,” he muses.

Caleb doesn’t deign him with an answer. Instead, he casts his eyes to the floor, looking at his shadowing outline in the slatted beams of moonlight coming through the roof.

“I did not mean to spring anything on you…” he says finally. “I just wanted to be completely forthright with you. Y-you are my friends, a-and you deserve to know—know _me_.”

_How can people love us if we are not ourselves? _

Is that what he wants? He wants them to love him? He thinks that might be true. He thinks he might love them, too, but that’s an entirely different beast. That’s one he’s not quite as ready to confront as this.

“You did good,” Beau says. It’s weird praise and he’s not sure how he feels about it.

“Wait, so, you already knew about it?” Fjord whirls on Beau. Beau looks to Caleb for any hesitation and, seeing nothing, gives her answer.

“Yeah,” she says. “Since Zadash. Just after the Victory Pit. Me and Nott both.”

“That long?!”

“Yeah! And what about it, Fjord?” Beau snaps. “I can keep secrets! You motherfuckers didn’t know my last name until, like, two weeks ago.”

“Was that when you all met Trent?” Jester asks quietly, interrupting the brewing argument. Beau nods.

“Yeah. I, uh, I kinda…” her eyes flick to Caleb again, but he makes no move to stop her from talking. “I kinda told him I’d get him into the library if he told me why he was afraid of fire.”

Jester makes a face. Fjord winces. “That’s… pretty standard old-school Beau.”

It’s a weak attempt at humour that gets a vague murmur of amusement from the group, but nothing substantial. This isn’t the place for it.

“Yeah,” Beau says, shifting uncomfortably, and her gaze drifts to Caleb. “But it turned out you weren’t scared of fire so much as you’re afraid of… yourself… I guess.”

She doesn’t look away this time, and it dawns on him a second later that she’s addressing him.

“Sure,” he says. It’s all he can make himself say.

“I never, like, apologised for that.”

“It’s fine.”

“It was kind of… extortion, though… or it was at least _shitty_ of me.”

“I said it’s fine, Beauregard.”

They fall back into that awful, uneasy silence, and Caleb can’t help but feel like he’s ruined everything all over again.

Caleb Widogast, Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Perpetual Ruiner Of Things And People And Houses.

Caduceus, as he so often does, softens the blow.

“We’re all tired, and we have a lot to think about.” He says. “I suggest we head back to the inn and get some sleep. We can talk more tomorrow when we’re more settled.”

Despite everything, they can’t argue with that.

So, with slow and careful movements they start to pack up to leave.

They’re filing out of the barn when Jester catches him by the sleeve. He glances at her and feels his heart drop as he takes in her wide eyes and tear-tracked face.

“Does…” she swallows and bites her lip, obviously struggling with what she’s trying to say. “Does that mean all the Scourgers had to do that?”

“Probably something similar, at least,” he finds himself saying. He shouldn’t say it. She doesn’t want to hear it. “It is a test of loyalty while also removing personal attachments. It’s efficient, I suppose.”

Jester looks incredibly uncomfortable with his statement, and Caleb doesn’t miss the warning glance he gets from Beau out of the corner of his eye. He turtles down a little further into his coat, letting Frumpkin, perched on his shoulders, block the monk from his view.

“Did you tell her?” Jester asks. She doesn’t say who she means but she doesn’t have to. Caleb knows.

“I tried to,” he murmurs.

“What did she say?”

“She did not care.”

“But _you_ care.”

Caleb bites his lip. “Caring does not matter so much when it’s this late.”

“I think it matters,” Jester insists. “It means there’s good in you… you’re a good person for caring.”

“I am not a good person, Jester,” he laughs without humour. “And even if what you are saying was true then it just means I am a good person at the wrong time.”

“Too little too late?” Fjord interjects from behind quietly. All eyes slip to him.

Caleb’s gut twists. “Sure,” he says. “I think that is apt.”

Fjord sighs. “We’re not finished with this conversation, Caleb.”

Caleb’s blood turns to ice but he somehow—_somehow_—manages to maintain eye contact with Fjord.

“I did not expect us to be.”

They make their way back down the river to the inn. This time, the journey is conducted in absolute silence. 

* * *

Ansel lets them in the back door, and they exchange only the barest of pleasantries before retreating to their rooms.

Caleb sets up the alarm as Nott begins to unpack. Afterwards, he sits on the end of the bed, boots and coat still on, staring at his hands. Frumpkin meows and winds around his feet, and Nott sits on the floor counting buttons.

The full events of the day rush up to meet Caleb like a tide.

A girl has died in his hometown. A girl has been murdered by the house he had grown up in. A terrifying beast has stalked the burned halls of the home his parents had built and has torn a girl to shreds.

They are stuck here, under the watch of a woman who doesn’t trust them, who is more than ready to blame them—sell them out—plaster their faces on wanted boards across the country because her people are scared.

There is a beast in his parents’ home. There is a thing that is not his mother. There is a lock on the door to the cellar that was not there before, and he hopes to the Gods those three things aren’t connected.

He’s now told his deepest, darkest shame to the people he cares about the most and they did not shun him. He let them see him and they did not run. And he should feel happy about that, maybe, but he doesn’t.

All this… all this and all he can think about it that _there is something in his house wearing the face of his mother and it is not her. _

_It is not her._

He is talking before he is conscious of it.

“You know,” he says weakly, hearing the clatter of buttons as Nott jumps at his abrupt words. “Before tonight I was starting to think I might have forgotten what she looked like.”

“Your mother?”

Caleb just nods and sits up.

Nott is quiet as she crosses the room to the bed and climbs up onto the mattress next to him. It’s not a very comfortable bed, but both of them have slept in much worse so they don’t complain. Nott grabs one of the rough woollen blankets and draws it over their knees.

“We don’t forget family that easily,” Nott says gently. “Not our mothers.”

Caleb remembers standing behind Nott at the door to Edith’s house in Felderwin, watching Luc stare incredulously at the image of Veth — time and absence having ravaged any certainty he could have held about her identity. He had been so hesitant to see her for who she was, and Caleb hadn’t missed how hard that had hit Nott.

“Children know their mothers.” Nott balls the blanket up in her small fists. “That never goes away.”

Caleb wraps an arm round her and pulls her to his side, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head. Nott slumps.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Don’t apologise,” he says. “Thank you for today.”

Nott hums contentedly, but it’s what she says next that surprises him a little, even if it’s not exactly unwelcome.

“Y-your mother was very pretty.”

He blanches for a second. “Uh, t-thank you.” Is he supposed to say thank you?

“You look like her, you know?” Nott says softly, face pressed halfway into his coat. “I bet you used to get that a lot.”

“A little bit,” he admits. “Most people thought I looked like my father.”

“Bet he had a big-ass beard, huh?”

And_ this_ is what finally pulls a real laugh from Caleb. It’s small and low, but real, and he feels Nott smile against him.

_“Ja._ For sure. The biggest.”

“Did he have red hair too or was that your mother?”

“Just her. He was blond as anything.”

“Ugh. I can’t picture you blond.”

Caleb laughs again, and Nott slings her arm as far as she can around his back, mirroring his hold on her.

“Tell me about them.” He barely hears her request with her face buried so deep in the folds of his clothes.

He doesn’t think he’d oblige for anyone else. But this is Nott. A mother, a wife, a friend, a protector; someone who inexplicably understands him more than anyone he’s met in sixteen years. He’ll always oblige for Nott the Brave—for Veth Brenatto. Always.

“Okay.”

So they crawl up farther onto the bed, kicking off boots and shucking off coats and Nott sits with her legs slung over his legs and counts her buttons and other treasures as he tells her about Una and Leofric Ermendrud, their son and their cat, and their house by the lupine fields that only got sun in the morning and flooded in the spring rains.

And when he falls asleep after twenty minutes, Nott pulls the blankets up over him and curls up at his side, busying herself with threading the crumpled mountain mallow she’d taken from his home into the rough hem of his sleeve until she drifts off.

And until two hours later, when Caleb wakes up gasping and grasping at an un-injured neck, the Mighty Nein rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOF. OOF! OOF!?! THAT WAS A THING. 
> 
> There’s a button on my keyboard that just says “SAD MOM BUTTON” and it’s permanently taped down and cannot be un-pressed. It's right next to the "Caleb's Verbal Patter" button which is just my name for the em-dash shortcut key.


	5. i'm not your answer but i'm a listening ear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Come, tell me your trouble_   
_I'm not your answer but I'm a listening ear_   
_Reality has left you reeling_   
_All facts and no feeling_   
_No faith and all fear_
> 
> — “Flags”, Brooke Fraser

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which jester finally gets baked goods. 
> 
> Sorry for the longer gap between chapters, but here's a long one to make up for it. Some people are going to talk about things and also be sad. What do you mean that's every chapter of this fic?
> 
> I’m just gonna apologise ahead of time for the google translate German in this chapter. It’s about the ambience folks.

It is silent in the Fair Lady as the Mighty Nein trudge upstairs, soaked to the bone and reeling from the revelations of the evening.

The peals of the distant thunder fill the tenuous quiet, but they are no longer a threat. The brief storm has faded to a gentle downpour and has taken with it any drive they may have possessed to keep discussing the day’s events.

Not that it matters, because Caleb and Nott are gone before any of them can even think about saying anything.

_That’s okay,_ Jester thinks as she wanders past their closed door_. I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone either_.

Jester lets Beau unlock the door to their room and push through into the gloom. While Jester peels off her drenched overclothes and muddy boots, Beau trails around the edge of the room, lighting the oil lamps.

The girls finish getting into their bedclothes and hang their wet garments over every available surface—the backs of their beds, the single wooden chair, the tiny, useless chest of drawers—and then, once they are done, their lack of action throws them back into that uncomfortable silence.

They stand there for a moment and Jester watches the flames in the lamps flicker.

Maybe for a little bit longer than she normally would.

But who’s to say?

“Hey, Jess?”

Beau’s voice snaps Jester to attention. She looks up, spying Beau standing awkwardly in the centre of the room, hands clasping and unclasping with residual energy.

“What’s up?” Jester asks, attempting to sound cheerful.

“He’s not a bad guy,” Beau says softly. “You know that, right?”

Jester is almost shocked. “Of course, Beau, I—”

Beau cuts her off. “Because I think he was really worried about what you’d think specifically.”

Jester blinks. Her? He’d been worried about what _she’d_ think?

“I—”

Beau continues. “He thought you’d… well, I don’t really know what he thought. Maybe he thought you’d hate him? I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you… for not. Hating him that is.”

Jester doesn’t know what her expression is saying right now, but it’s apparently something that makes Beau worried, because she keeps talking.

“You don’t hate him? Right?”

“No!” Jester shakes her head furiously.

“Okay. Good. That’s… that’s good.” Beau runs a fitful hand through her hair as she steps back and sinks into a tense, cross-legged perch on her mattress. Her fingers are pulling loose her already roughed-up topknot, sending thick, grimy strands of dark hair down across her face. She looks awful.

Jester walks over and lays a gentle hand on Beau’s wrist, stilling her.

“It’s okay, Beau,” she says, because it’s the only thing she can think to say.

Beau chuckles dryly.

“I think I fucked up, Jess,” she says.

“How?”

“I think I forced him into it,” she admits. She meets Jester’s eyes, face twisted into a mirthless grimace. “I got pretty mad…”

“That’s what you two were arguing about, wasn’t it?” Jester asks. “Back at the house?”

Beau nods. “I was rough with him, wasn’t I?”

“A bit.”

Beau exhales, shaky and short. “_Fuck_, man… what if I fucked this up? He… back at the house he said_ I_ should tell you, like—like is that what he thinks? He thinks I’d spill his shit like that? Am I—_Gods_—Am I that fucking untrustworthy? What if…”

She trails off, looking mildly embarrassed. Jester squeezes her hand.

“What if what?”

“…Nothing.”

“_Beau_,” Jester urges.

“It’s nothing. Ignore me. I don’t know why I’m so hung up on this.”

“Because you care about him, Beau,” Jester says with a smile. “You’re his friend.”

Beau laughs.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“As always,” Jester teases. Beau rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

The silence stretches between them again, more comfortable than before. In it, Jester can hear the faint sounds of muffled voices through the wall behind Beau’s bed, the one that separates their room from Fjord and Caduceus’s.

Jester wonders if they’re talking about Caleb, and then quickly decides _probably_, because why wouldn’t they be? She just hopes it’s nothing mean… because, well…

Maybe she needs to think about it too.

“We should probably get to sleep,” she says, and gives Beau’s hand one last squeeze before drifting back to her bed.

“It’s been a long fuckin’ day,” Beau comments, wrestling her way under the covers.

It _has_ been a long day. One that started with a violent and cruel murder and ended with the confession of another. Jester can’t say she’s had many days quite like it – or that she’s hoping for more.

She settles into bed, pulling the thick woollen blankets up to her chin even though she isn’t cold. Rain pelts the window like a million tiny finger-taps.

“Goodnight, Beau,” she whispers.

“G’night, Jester.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“You too.”

* * *

Jester can’t sleep.

She lays in the dark after the lamps are extinguished and watches Beau for a while, watches the steady rise and fall of her chest just to prove to herself that she’s been healed.

It’s something she started doing on watches. After the Iron Shepherds, even though they had the bubble, she had taken to keeping half her attention on her friends during her shifts. She would watch them breathe, see their rhythms, to such an extent that she had started to be able to pick up on when they were dreaming.

Beau is dreaming now. Jester wonders what about and hopes it’s something nicer than real life.

Time ticks ever forward and Jester still cannot sleep. The wooden beams of the Fair Lady groan and settle against the winds outside, and the mild patter of rain on the windows and roof fades into background noise, a static that Jester submerges herself in. She thinks maybe an hour passes, maybe two… she’s not quite sure.

She sketches to pass the time.

She draws the beast that had seemed to melt into the shadows with teeth that dripped with saliva and eyes that burned like tongues of fire.

She draws the Ermendrud house how she thinks it might have once looked: half-timbered like the other buildings in town, with flowers in window boxes and shutters thrown wide. She draws a little column of smoke spilling from the chimney to give the illusion of life within without having to work up the courage to draw living people in the picture.

She draws Caleb. She draws him in profile, the way he looked tonight in the barn, with little shafts of moonlight making the flyaway strands of his hair glow and catching the tracks of tears on his cheeks like mercury.

It had been the first time she had ever seen him cry.

She’d seen him _almost_ cry before but that’s not the same. Seeing Caleb cry had been, in a weird way, sort of like seeing her mother cry for the first time. It had been the startling experience of seeing a person who usually put on such a composed face let it slip.

_He curls in on himself under the dappled sheets of moonlight, shoulders hunched, one hand in Nott’s and the other digging blunt nails into the rain-slicked flesh of his forearm. He cries like doing so is wrong. He cries like he’ll be punished for it. He cries like letting them see his tears is a weakness._

Jester is surprised to find she sort of… gets it. She understands not wanting to cry, not wanting to let people see where you fracture.

She understands that.

But what she doesn’t understand is how he could talk like he genuinely expected them to hate him.

Part of her wants to make some kind of snide comment, like, “he must not know us that well if he thinks that”, but she knows that’s not fair.

It rubs her the wrong way all the same.

He had told them his story and then brushed them off. He’d saddled them with that and then ignored everything they’d had to say, all the help they’d been willing to offer.

Caleb hadn’t _wanted_ support, and _that’s_ what baffles Jester. Because she understands not wanting to be sad, but she’s never met anyone who didn’t want to be happy.

Jester looks down at her open sketchbook, at the little house and the dog and the picture of Caleb, and she pulls out her quill again. In the margin, looping the text around a sketched strand of Caleb’s hair, she writes her message.

_Traveller? How do I fix something that doesn’t want to be fixed? _

“Something? Or someone?”

Jester gasps softly and looks to the foot of her bed where a figure in a familiar green cloak now sits.

“Traveler!” She whisper-shouts. He laughs, soft like a bell, and raises a finger to his lips.

“We don’t want to wake your friend, do we?” He says, gesturing lightly to Beau’s sleeping form. Jester claps her hand over her mouth and nods.

“Did you hear…?” She asks, not entirely sure how to broach the subject. “In the barn?”

The Traveler nods, almost imperceptible if Jester hadn’t been looking for the motion. “Your companions carry interesting stories,” he says.

“Sad ones,” Jester says.

“Indeed.”

“I thought I’d kinda had him figured out, but I guess not, huh?”

She looks down at the drawing again, at tears like liquid metal, at shed secrets and old sins.

“Does it chill you, Jester?” The Traveler asks.

Something in it _does_ chill her. Caleb had killed his parents, the people who had raised him, and he’d done so because he’d thought it had been the right thing. Jester can’t imagine ever thinking of her own mother in such a way—she can’t fathom anything swaying her to commit such an act.

But for a moment her mind is filled with the image of the Chateau, of her, arm outstretched to will holy destruction upon the building and everyone inside, of breaking so completely. The vision is gone as quickly as it had appeared, but Jester is left with a hammering heart and fists balled so tightly she almost snaps her quill.

But she knows it’s not the whole story.

Jester is, perhaps, naïve, but she’s not _stupid_.

She knows what abuse is. She knows what power over another can look like. She knows that magic isn’t the only way to make people do things they normally wouldn’t do.

“It wasn’t his fault. Not all of it,” she says. “Not all the way.”

“Perhaps,” the Traveler says mildly. “A blight is not the fault of the flower it sullies, but the fault of its weak roots and bad soil. It’s not its fault, but often one must cull the entire plant to be rid of the disease.”

“That’s… not fair at all.”

“Gardening rarely is. Neither is life. Your pink friend could tell you something about that.”

“Are you saying there’s nothing we can do? He’s just going to be sad forever?”

The God at the foot of Jester’s bed hums thoughtfully.

“There are unfixable things in this world,” he says finally, and Jester’s heart sinks. “Perhaps this is one such thing. But perhaps it’s not. Regardless, wounds of the soul cannot be healed as quickly as wounds of the flesh.”

“But they can still be healed, right?”

“Who’s to say?”

Jester pouts. “You sure are being extra mysterious today, aren’t you?”

The Traveler just laughs. “I’m sure if there’s anyone who could mend the unmendable it would be you, dear Jester.”

Jester smirks and is just about to reply when she is stopped by an abrupt noise from the room next door.

She wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been up against the wall, but through the thin wood that separates their rooms she hears Caleb gasp.

She holds her breath.

There’s a rustling noise, the creaking of bedsprings, and the sound of a high, quiet voice._ Nott_. Jester catches herself straining to listen but can’t make out words.

A second voice joins the fray, deeper and softer than the first, and it’s obviously Caleb. Their tones reverberate gently through the wood-panelled wall next to Jester’s bed, and she listens to the vibration of the voices, the low hum of almost-words, tossed back and forth across the adjacent room.

She turns back to tell the Traveler but, in his usual fashion, the end of her bed sits empty.

And then there’s the sound of feet hitting the floor and slow footfalls crossing the room and Jester jerks her attention back to the wall.

The sound of a door opening and closing. The sound of a sigh.

Jester is out of bed in a flash, padding to the door with her blanket wrapped around her shoulders in a makeshift cloak. With a short glance over her shoulder to make sure Beau is still asleep she quietly eases the door open and slips into the hallway.

* * *

She had half expected him to be gone, to have grabbed his coat and books and vanished.

In the early days of their group Jester had always gone to sleep uncertain if Nott and Caleb would be there when they woke up and seeing them at breakfast every morning had been a surprise. A welcome one, mind you, but a surprise all the same.

It had been after Molly, Jester thinks, when that uncertainty had properly disappeared. Something had shifted between them all after that and the threads that held them together seemed to pull just a little bit tighter. She had been able to fall asleep next to Nott and know she’d still be within arm’s reach in the morning. She’d be able to pass watch over to Caleb and know he’d be there to pass it on to the next person.

But she hasn’t quite realised how comfortable that certainty had made her until now, when she no longer feels it. Every step she takes downstairs is a lead weight in her stomach. Will he be there, or will he be gone?

_Has he left thinking I hate him?_

Jester creeps down the stairs, careful to lower her weight onto the old floorboards slowly, so as not to make too much noise. It’s only halfway successful. She steps quietly off the landing onto the floor of the tavern, bare feet slipping a little on the polished wood.

At first, she thinks it’s empty and her heart sinks, but then she sees a lone figure sitting at a table by the bar. He’s got his back to her, hunched over, red hair backlit by a single, flickering candle.

She walks forward.

“Caleb?”

He jumps, almost slipping from his chair. Frumpkin, who had been loafed up on the table, jumps immediately to attention and _hisses_.

“Woah! Hey! Sorry!” Jester whispers, holding her hands up in surrender.

Unfocused blue eyes meet hers, and she watches Caleb blink a few times before he manages to force himself to process what he’s seeing. He visibly relaxes, shoulders drooping and his whole form slumping back down into his chair.

He looks fucking _exhausted_.

“H-hi… hi, Jester…” he says quietly, averting his gaze back down to the table, where Jester can see his books splayed out in front of him.

“Hi,” she says quietly back, taking a seat near him.

Caleb begins to pack up his books, likely trying to hide them from Jester’s prying eyes as he always does. With nothing on the table to occupy him, Frumpkin wanders over to Jester and sniffs at her hands until she pets him.

“Hello, Frumpy!” she coos. The little cat purrs as she scritches him gently under his chin.

She thinks she sees Caleb smile, maybe, out of the corner of her eye.

“Why are you up?” She asks conversationally.

Caleb sighs. “I had a… uh, very vivid nightmare.”

“Oh.”

“What about you?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.”

Frumpkin continues to purr while his wizard proceeds to look more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. Jester always wonders how much of Frumpkin’s personality is actually Caleb shining through, but in this moment, she thinks the familiar’s happiness it might be all his own, because Caleb looks like he wants to pass out right there at the table.

“Can we talk, Caleb?”

A pause. Then.

“_Ja. _Of course.”

Jester stares at her hands, still absently petting at Frumpkin’s little head. He’s still purring. That’s a good sign? Right?

“He hurt you, Caleb.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He finally looks at her, and he looks _awful_. His eyes are dull and tired, his skin pale, his hands shaky.

“I have the scars to prove it, Jester.”

“I’m not talking about just—just _physical_ abuse,” she says. She raised her hand, slow and careful, and places it over his scarred wrist. Stricken blue eyes follow the movement the whole way, and the tension coiled in his joints doesn’t quite dissipate as her fingers meet his skin.

“I’m talking about, like, _mind_ stuff, you know?” She continues. “You were really young, Caleb.”

“I know that too, but…” he stops for a moment, and seems to gather himself before continuing. “How old are you, Jester?”

“Pfft. It’s not very polite to ask a lady her age.”

“I was seventeen,” he continues. “Do you remember being seventeen?”

She _does_ remember being seventeen; it hadn’t been too long ago.

“Yeah,” she says.

“When you were seventeen… if the Traveler had asked you to kill your mother, would you have done it?”

_She is seventeen and her hair is long, almost long enough to reach her waist, and she wears it in coiled braids to stop the thick blue locks from getting caught on loose nails and splinters in the hidey-holes and crawlspaces she uses to manoeuvre around the Chateau. _

_“You are much too old to be climbing around in the walls like a little house spirit, my little Sapphire,” her mother says, carefully brushing the tangles from her daughter’s long hair. _

_“But what else am I supposed to do when I get bored, Momma?” Jester asks. She stares at her reflection in the vanity. She is seventeen and her face is soft at the edges, not yet having shaken the roundness of childhood. _

_Her mother glances away. “Paint, read, practice your music,” she offers. “There are many things a young woman can do to pass the time.”_

_“What about another prank?” The Traveler says later, when they are alone in her room. “That stuffy Lady Nibu in suite F could certainly do with a fake haunting?”_

_“That sounds fun, but I’d have to get in the walls again, and Momma doesn’t like it when I get my hair all mussed up.”_

_“Then cut it.”_

_“What?”_

_“Cut it. Then it won’t get tangled.”_

_“But Momma doesn’t like—”_

_“But what do you like?”_

_She is seventeen and she cuts her hair herself in her bathroom mirror in the middle of the night with a pair of silver scissors. The Traveler stands behind her, making sure the line she cuts is more or less straight. When she’s done it falls just below her jaw, curling at the tips. _

_“Perfect,” she whispers. _

Jester feels her skin crawl. “Caleb, that’s awful!” she hisses. “D-don’t ask me that shit!”

“Would you, though?” he asks again. Too calm. “At seventeen. You knew what was right and wrong?”

“I-I wouldn’t have killed my mom! What sort of—”

“Then that’s the difference between you and me, Jester. You are strong enough to stick to what you know is right. Seventeen is old enough to know better.”

Jester frowns. “You were _lied_ to.”

“Yes, but I was not _controlled_, Jester. Everything I did I did because I wanted to. He told me to kill them and I did it, because I was awful enough to believe in a monster instead of what was right.”

“How are you supposed to know what’s right when the person teaching you is a monster?”

“They were my parents, Jester!” he says through gritted teeth, the closest he’s come to raising his voice all night. “Somewhere deep down I knew it was wrong and I had the decency to lose my mind over it. But how fucked up do you have to be to think killing the people that raised you is _justified_ in the first place?!”

Jester flinches back, drawing her hands away from his arms and into her lap. His eyes widen.

“I-I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

Silence.

Frumpkin isn’t purring anymore. The lack of that small shred of joy is deafening.

Silence in Nicodranas is never truly quiet. Even in the small moments when the city is still, the sound of the sea is a constant whisper, ambient and always there. Jester hadn’t been aware of it until she left, until after dozens of nights lying awake in forests and inns in the Empire trying to figure out why the silence was so eerie and she’d realised why: she was too far from the sea. 

It’s like that now, here, in the heart of the Empire so far from her home. The pieces of what tethers her to Caleb hang fragile and silent in the air between them and Jester is scared to make a noise. She doesn’t want to shatter what they have, but she’s afraid even the hushing of the sea could break it, let alone her words.

To the north, where the sea doesn’t speak. In the north, the silence is quiet.

“Our… our actions don’t define us all of the time,” Jester says softly, barely above a whisper. Surprisingly, nothing seems to shatter.

_“Good people do bad things sometimes_,” Caleb says, taking the next words right out of her mouth. “You have said this before.”

“I know.”

“You know more about me now, though.”

“I know. But I still believe what I said.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re nice and funny. Because you… you go along with my pranks and believe me about the Traveler… and because you get sad when Frumpkin poofs even though he’s not really dead and you read with Beau and gave Fjord that glove even though you wanted it and you make Nott really happy and…”

She swallows back tears but feels them sting her eyes anyway. She lets them fall noiselessly onto her balled fists.

“A-and because I can tell it hurts you when you use fire on people, Caleb. I think you hate it, actually.”

He looks up at her, and he’s crying too. Now it’s the second time she’s ever seen him cry, and now she’s the one that made it happen. She’s not quite sure how she feels about that — it all depends on what kind of tears they are.

“I think it’s what we do right now that matters,” she continues. “It’s what we _feel_ right now. And you told me ages ago that you were glad I see good in you. I still do, you know. Are you still glad?”

“I am,” he says hoarsely.

Jester smiles. “I still see good in you, Caleb. I want to see good in you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut as if steeling himself, and those liquid metal tears—no longer illuminated by moonlight—are just tears now, real and messy and tired. “I am trying to fix my mistakes, Jester… I am rectifying things, but…”

He sighs. 

“Even if we take down my… if we take down Ikithon, that does not change what I did. I do not think I will ever be able to forgive myself.” He doesn’t look at her. “It is not something I have the right to forgive. I will take this guilt with me until the end of my life.”

Jester hadn’t been able to heal Molly—to _fix_ him—she’d been locked away and unaware and she hadn’t known the right spells, but she is stronger now. _There are unfixable things in this world, _the Traveler had said, but Jester knows that all you need for _Revivify_ is enough diamonds and just like that the impossible is possible; In the caverns under Assarius she had fixed the unfixable.

She is a healer; she is the cleric. They all keep telling her this is supposed to be her fucking _job_ but now Caleb won’t let her do it.

She has her hands free; she is not bound or hidden, and she is no longer unaware. She can read the map of Caleb’s pain in front of her as simply as she would be able to read a map of the Menagerie Coast. But none of that _matters_.

How do you fix someone that doesn’t want to be fixed?

The Traveler’s talk of roots and soil and flowers tumbles through her head. _Cull_, he’d said. You must cull the whole plant.

That’s not fair.

It’s not fucking_ fair. _

“I can’t help you, Caleb,” she whispers, and it’s almost an admission.

“I do not need you to, Jester,” he says softly. His eyes glimmer weakly in the candlelight. “You are helping me plenty by just being here.”

“I think that’s where we’re going to disagree.”

“Mm… probably.”

Frumpkin continues to purr, and Jester hopes some of his happiness belongs to Caleb too.

“I don’t hate you, you know,” she says. “I want you to at least know that.”

“Okay,” he says. That’s all he says.

“You can talk to me. I… I know I keep saying that, but I mean it every time and I’m glad you told me about your parents.”

“Thank you.”

“You should go back to bed.”

“So should you.”

They do. Jester gives Caleb a small kiss on the cheek and he squeezes her hand and she watches him head back upstairs. It’s not until he’s out of sight and she hears the tell-tale sound of a door closing that she snuffs out the candle and follows suit.

* * *

The Mighty Nein don’t re-emerge from their rooms until noon. Chalk it up to their late bedtime, overall fatigue, or subconscious unwillingness to face the day, either way lunch is in full swing by the time they regroup at the bar.

“_Morgen_,” Ansel says as Beau and Jester shuffle downstairs. They’re the first to arrive, and the first to slide into two of the few available stools at the bar. “Or should I just say _hallo_? I do not blame you for sleeping in.”

“Late to bed, late to rise, my man,” Beau says, stifling a yawn. Ansel chuckles. “We’ll grab whatever’s hot. Coffee for me. Jess?”

“Water is fine!”

Ansel nods and disappears into the kitchen, leaving Jester and Beau afloat in the bustle of the tavern. There are more people inside now than they’ve seen during their stay. Jester supposes it might be some kind of peak hour—or maybe the field closures have just brought farmers back into town at an odd time.

They seem lively; they’re drinking and laughing and downing plates of nice-looking meats and breads and soups. If Jester hadn’t spent a good chunk of yesterday morning washing dried blood off herself it would have been hard for her to guess at the kind of tragedy that had unfolded the previous day.

“They seem happy,” Jester says.

“If there’s one thing Zemnians are known for it’s being fuckin’ good in a crisis.” Beau drums her fingers absently on the wood countertop, but her eyes dart to the stairs at every opportunity.

Jester smiles. “That’s a good quality to have.”

Beau smirks, spotting something across the room. “Damn right it is—Hey, Widogast! Over here!”

Jester leans back as far as she can in her seat to catch sight of Caleb and a disguised Nott as they step out onto the bottom landing of the staircase. She gives them a wave, which only Nott returns.

There’s only one stool free, so Caleb hoists himself into it with obvious effort while Nott climbs up onto his lap.

“You look like death warmed over, dude,” Beau says, and it’s kinda true. The bags under his eyes have bags and his skin is even more pale than usual. He looks none too pleased to have it pointed out, either.

“_Danke, _Beauregard.”

“Seriously, did you not get enough sleep?”

“I thought I did,” he mumbles, “but I am… worried, maybe.”

Nott scrambles up Caleb like a ladder and plants herself on the bar, sliding close so the four of them can lean in and speak quietly.

“_I’m _worried,” Nott clarifies. “Caleb thinks it’s probably nothing. But it’s not nothing.”

Beau and Jester share a glance. “Worried about what?” Beau asks.

“He’s had the same nightmare two nights in a row,” Nott whispers. “Real violent ones.”

“All nightmares are violent,” Caleb assures dryly, and Nott makes a face at him. “But the… the pain I feel in them continues after I wake up.”

He absently scratches at his neck, and Jester suddenly remembers him doing the same thing yesterday.

“What happens in the nightmare?” she asks. Caleb gives her a look she can’t quite read.

“Both nights I have seen the _vollstrecker_ woman,” he admits, then he pauses. “And then I—She… M-my throat is slit and then I wake up.”

“And you can feel it?” Beau asks.

He nods.

“But there’s no wound?”

He nods again.

“Do you think it’s a curse or something?” Jester offers.

“I am not ruling that out, but it could just be overactive imagination.” Caleb meets her eye for only a second before turning his gaze to his hands. “Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern, _ja?”_

“Still,” Beau says. “If this is what’s stopping you from getting rested then I don’t know if we should let it get to a third time. I’ve seen what exhaustion can to do a person, man, it’s not pretty. We need you at your best.”

Caleb grits his teeth. “I am well aware of the consequences of sleep deprivation, Beauregard.”

_Oh_, Jester thinks, _there it is._ _That’s_ the thing she’s going to doubly hate from now on.

Caleb has a tendency to say dark shit, to insinuate and imply the nastiest of things without ever really saying anything that bad. But now it’s not insinuating. _I’ve done terrible things,_ he told them over and over, but now Jester has a name for one of those terrible things, and all the others are falling into place.

She remembers kneeling next to him under the decks of _The Mist_, watching him stare down at a prisoner with icy blue eyes._ I’ll go to work if I need to, _he’d said, and it wasn’t until later that she knew what he meant. It’s not until now that she can really imagine it.

_I am well aware of the consequences of sleep deprivation. _

_On yourself or on others?_ She wants to ask.

But she doesn’t ask. She just sits there and hates it, hates it, hates it, hates it, hates it—

“_Frau_ Nott, I would appreciate you not sitting on my bar.”

Like the patron saint of blissful interruptions, Ansel has returned from the kitchen, carrying a platter stuffed with breads, cheeses, and six bowls of steaming soup. Nott stammers out an apology and scrambles into Caleb’s lap. Ansel places a mug of coffee and a glass of water down in front of Beau and Jester but holds onto the food.

“I figured your companions would be joining you, so I prepared food for everyone,” he says. “It’s not the freshest, but this is as warm as it will get until dinner.”

Jester beams. “Oh, thank you so much, Ansel!”

“You are most welcome, Jester. But may I suggest moving to a table. Your, uh, larger friends might be a bit much for the bar to handle.”

Ansel steers them away from the admittedly overstuffed bar towards a newly vacated table in the far corner by the stairs, just in time for Fjord and Caduceus to arrive.

“Good morning,” Caduceus rumbles gently. “I see you’ve gotten started.”

“Mornin’ Deuces,” Beau replies through a mouthful of thick soup. “We got you breakfast!”

“Thank you, Miss. Beau.”

Caduceus and Fjord take seats between Nott and Jester, and the bowls of soup are distributed around the small table. Drinks and secondary food orders are taken, delivered, and it’s only after they’re halfway through their meals that the atmosphere begins to feel even moderately settled.

They don’t talk about last night. It would almost be like it hadn’t happened, if Fjord would only make eye contact with Caleb, or if Caleb would look up from his food at least once. Jester kind of wishes they would talk about it, just to break the tension.

It’s Caduceus that breaks it, in the end, in his own way.

“Mr. Caleb, are you feeling well?”

Caleb looks up, the bags under his eyes almost comically pronounced under the shadows of the tavern’s low ceilings.

“Why do people keep asking me that?” he mutters.

Nott rolls her eyes. “Because you look like you’ve been run over by a moorbounder.”

“You look like a wet rat,” Beau offers. Nott chuckles.

Jester smiles. It’s startlingly normal for them to rib him like that and she is grateful. She hadn’t known how sorely she’d needed to see it was still something that could happen.

“Fine,” Caleb says, taking a long sip of his coffee. “I am not feeling well.”

Nott catches the boys up on Caleb’s nightmares, and Caduceus listens intently until she’s finished. Jester watches Caleb, sees how he averts his eyes from the other men the entire time, only looking up from his coffee to make brief glances at Beau or correct Nott on a detail.

“Sounds like it could be a curse,” Caduceus says. “I’d be happy to cast a restorative.”

“I don’t want you to waste a spell slot.”

“It’s not a waste, Mr. Caleb.”

Maybe it’s something in Caduceus’s soft but firm gaze, but Caleb looks almost embarrassed when he finally caves.

_“Ja,_ okay, but we’ll do it later when we don’t have a tavern full of people who haven’t seen magic before breathing down our necks.”

Caduceus looks pleased.

“Okay, well! Do we have anything else to discuss?” Jester asks, clapping her hands together like she’s calling attendance.

“Caduceus and I communed with the Wildmother last night,” Fjord speaks up for the first time. “Mostly Caduceus.”

Caduceus chuckles. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Sure,” Fjord flushes slightly, his green cheeks darkening. “Anyway, we can pretty safely say the, uh, the ghost wasn’t actually undead. At all. It was an illusion.”

Nott chokes on her soup. “An illusion? Not a creature? You’re sure?”

Fjord nods. “Why? You know something?”

Nott wrings her hands together. “There’s a spell I know—well, actually, I don’t know it _yet_—but there’s a spell that can create, like, a stationary illusion? I read about it a few weeks ago.”

“Like what I do?” Fjord asks, more alert now that the topic seems to be off the ghost and on to magic.

Nott bites her lip. “No, it’s similar in size but… it’s like, permanent? Do you know what I’m talking about Caleb?”

“Hmm,” Caleb takes a sip of his coffee. “I haven’t heard of it. Illusion magic has never been by area, Nott, it is your, uh, forte, _ja?”_

“My forte?”

“Yes, uh, your area of expertise.”

“I know what a forte is, Caleb. Are you saying I have a magic forte?”

“Uh… _Ja?_”

“Huh…” Nott looks momentarily taken aback, but she seems to recover quickly. “A-anyway. You sort of program the image to repeat actions or sounds on a loop. You set up the illusion so it triggers under set conditions—times, actions, noises—like, you could set up the sound of a dragon in a cave to go off if people walk in to keep them from getting treasure or something.”

“…or a ghost in a house to make people think it’s haunted…” Jester whispers, eyes widening.

“…and keep them from finding what’s in your cellar,” Beau finishes.

“Sure,” says Nott, a little timidly. “But that’s just one option.”

“It sounds like the right one,” Beau says. “But if that’s it then what’s the trigger? We were in that house the day before and we didn’t see any ghosts.”

“It could be the door itself?” Fjord suggests. Nott makes a noise of disagreement.

“We were right on top of that door for a while without triggering anything. It would’ve been set off when I tried to pick it.”

“It’s the time of day,” Caleb interrupts quietly. “M—The illusion appeared after the sun set.”

Nott chips in again. “The illusion dropped after we left the kitchen, though.”

“So, it’s when someone’s in the kitchen at night?” Fjord says. The ensuing silence is a quiet agreement.

“It’s a good way of keeping people away… you know?” Beau chews absently on the edge of her soup spoon. “You don’t even really have to do much. Just… make it seem like there’s something fucked up beyond the pines and let everyone convince themselves not to go looking for it.”

“It has to have been someone who knew her… knew my mother.” Caleb’s voice is taut, like a bowstring, and it catches Jester off guard.

“And they’re fucking around in your house,” Beau adds with a cryptic sort of smirk. “That’s enough to make anyone fuckin’ angry.”

Caleb gives her a look, and then:

_“Verseihung, uh, w-wer von euch ist Jester?”_

There’s an unholy clatter of plates and cutlery as the entire table is caught unawares by a new voice, but Jester perks up specifically at the sound of her name, wrapped in foreign language.

She swivels in her seat to see the young human boy, maybe about six or seven, who has just spoken and is standing a few feet away from their table. He’s dressed in plain clothes, topped off with a warm looking woollen jacket that does nothing to hide his scrawny frame and a little cap.

He also looks about ready to run. His eyes dart from Jester to Fjord to Caduceus in quick succession, cataloguing tusks and tails and ears and horns like a cornered animal. Jester feels her stomach twist just a little.

_“Das ist sie,”_ Caleb says, gesturing towards Jester. _“Warum?”_

The boy focuses on Caleb, looking mildly more comfortable to be talking to another human—or maybe that’s just Jester’s imagination. Maybe not.

_“Ich h-habe eine Nachricht f-für sie.” _The boy stammers.

Caleb glances at Jester with a confused looks on his face before getting up and crouching down next to the boy. The boy looks wary, but Caleb holds out his hands placatingly. _“Wer hat es geschickt?”_

_“F-Frau Müller.”_

The Nein share a long series of significant looks. Well, _that_ doesn’t need translating.

Caleb says a few more things, one of which apparently involves slipping the boy seven silver pieces that turn him white as a sheet. The boy stutters some kind of protest, but Caleb reaches out and carefully closes his tiny fingers around the coin.

_“Von uns allen,”_ he says, and then he nods to Jester. “You have a letter from our dear lady mayor.”

Jester has the grace to only gape like a drowning fish for a few seconds.

The little boy reaches into his rucksack and draws out a small, folded letter. He hands it shakily to Caleb, but his wide eyes are trained on Jester and her horns the entire time.

“Th—uh, _danke_.” Jester tries to give her best smile. The boy mumbles a soft “_bitte_” before tearing off into the crowd.

Jester gasps. “Quick, Caleb! How do I say _bye_?”

“_Tschüss_,” he supplies, probably instinctively more than anything else.

Beau barks a laugh. “You’re fucking _kidding_.”

Jester busies herself with trying to echo it. “Ch-sh..ch-chews? Shooss?”

“Just say bye,” Caleb says. Jester whirls around in her seat, almost toppling herself over in the process.

“Bye-bye, little boy!” She cries. “Thank you!”

The boy is already gone, but the shout does earn a few turned heads from some of the adult patrons. Jester gives them a wave and hastily scoots back to the table.

“—think she has, like, an army of messenger children that do her dark bidding?” Beau is saying, still staring at the place the boy had been. “That’s pretty dope.”

“Uh, guys? Focus?” Fjord points to the letter in Caleb’s hands.

“Oh shit, okay, yeah, pass it here.”

Caleb tosses her the letter and Jester tears into the wax seal. It’s not very expensive looking letter stock, but the penmanship is impeccable. It reads:

_Dear Ms. Jester,_

_Contrary to my recommendation and against my better judgement my office writes to you on the behalf of the Mündermann family to pass on their request to meet with you today at their home._

_This request comes from their eldest daughter, Liesel, who I believe you met briefly. I warn you that if you take up their offer to meet any further emotional upset that befalls them will be assumed to be your doing. _

_Do not breach this trust. Remember: West Zemni to the Candles. _

_Angela Müller._

“It’s about Liesel…” Jester says. “S-she wants to see me. Today.”

Beau snatches the letter from Jester’s loose grip, but she barely registers it. She’s too busy thinking about Liesel. About Hana Mündermann, limp in her sister’s arms. Unfixable.

_Fix her!_ Liesel had shouted. But Jester hadn’t been able too. Unfixable.

She thinks about Caleb. Unfixable.

About Yasha. Unfixable.

About Molly…

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Beau’s indignant shout draws Jester back to reality. “Get this: ‘West Zemni to the Candles’. That bitch is _still_ threatening us with warrants!”

“It’s just how we’re going to have to play the game, Beau,” Fjord sighs.

“We’re fucking innocent! What happened to justice?!” She slams her fist down on the table, sending cutlery clattering like discordant percussion. Caleb and Fjord both shush her.

“Do you want to go, Jessie?” Nott asks, Jester meets her worried yellow eyes.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“You gonna be okay alone?” Fjord asks beside her. She nods, smiling, and gives his hand a little squeeze under the table.

“I should be fine. I remember where they live, and I’ll just message you if anything bad happens.”

“So, what do we do while Jester makes her house call?” Beau wonders aloud.

“The boy said they are investigating the south fields now,” Caleb says, finishing his coffee. “So, it’s probably best we spend the afternoon doing research here and then heading out at night.”

“Sounds like a plan. What are we researching?”

Caleb chews on his lip thoughtfully. “Any magic users in the area. If we find someone with the capability to cast powerful illusion magic that could be our… perpetrator.”

“Local legends would also be useful,” Caduceus adds. “Anything about strange wolves.”

“Or nightmares,” Nott says.

Beau rocks back in her seat lazily. “But where do we find that?”

Caleb waves for their attention. “We might be able to convince one of the crownsguard to escort us to the temple; that’s where they keep the old town records, among other things.”

Fjord looks mildly intrigued. “Why’s that?”

“The temple has been here much longer than the Empire, so it’s sort of traditional at this point to keep at least some records there.” Caleb clears his throat. “Also, it will also be easier to access the temple records than the town hall records; I do not think Müller likes us very much.”

“Ya think?” Beau drawls. Caleb shoots her a glare that could only be described as withering.

Jester once again smiles at the normalcy of it.

“So, it’s a plan?” Fjord says. When no one interrupts, he says, “Alright. We’ll meet back you at the temple then, Jester?”

The Mighty Nein finish their meals and split up to get ready. As the bulk of her companions head back upstairs, Jester grabs Caduceus by the sleeve to hold him back.

“Caduceus?”

“Yes?”

Jester feels that all too familiar pit begin to open in her stomach again, but she surges forward. “What if they blame me for what happened?”

Caduceus puts his hand on her shoulder. “Nobody is blaming you for anything.”

“I know! I know, it’s just… I’m scared to talk to them, they—they lost their _daughter_.”

“You know,” Caduceus says. “One of the hardest things you have to do as a healer is deliver bad news. Mourning families require a different kind of healing. Liesel _wants_ to talk to you, and she deserves at least that.”

“Does it get easier?” She asks, hating how childish it sounds.

Caduceus smiles down at her, soft and sad and warm. “No,” he says. “We just get tougher.”

* * *

It's mid-afternoon by the time Jester arrives at the Mündermann house, but the thin blanket of fog that has settled in the valley after the previous night’s rain has not quite abated.

The effect is quite eerie. As Jester follows the mud-tracked dirt road from town to the northern fields, the fog wraps the rolling mountain foothills, so bright and cheerful not two days before, in a gloomy shroud. Jester sticks close to the low stone wall that borders the road and watches the sheep on the other side munch at the wet grass. Even they look creepier than normal.

She remembers the way to the Mündermann house well enough, though she wouldn’t have said no to even a little guidance from Müller’s letter. But she figures if Müller was inclined to give them help, she would have done so before now.

_Gods_ that woman is mean. If anyone here is a vampire, it’s probably her.

The Mündermann’s farmhouse is a large, two-storey number. It’s a bit bigger that the Ermendrud house, big enough to warrant having a gate and a courtyard, and as Jester peels off the road to approach the door she is pleasantly surprised to see the courtyard filled with about a dozen clucking chickens.

“Hello, chickeys!” she whispers as she passes. They pay her no mind.

The house itself is half-timbered, with pale white walls stained by age and activity and dark wooden crossbeams that make up the home’s framework. The roof is thick and tightly thatched, with little planters filled with varying flowers and herbs hanging from the eaves. The window shutters are painted blue and are in various states of open, letting the diamond patterned glass behind them peak out into the misty afternoon light—into the little courtyard with the chickens.

Jester wonders if Caleb’s home had looked like this once. Quaint and soft.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, but the chimney is spilling out a steady stream of smoke, so Jester figures someone must be home. She casts _Tongues_, knocks on the door, and waits.

It’s a woman who answers.

The Mighty Nein hadn’t encountered Hans’s wife the first time they’d come to his house, but Jester assumes this is her. She’s a stout woman, a little taller than Jester, with flyaway blonde hair tied into a tight bun and dark eyes that peer down at Jester with scrutiny that quickly turns to surprise.

“Oh,” the woman says. “You’re the healer.”

Jester watches the woman’s eyes roam over her from top to bottom, lingering just a little longer on the horns and the tail than anywhere else. Jester feels a twinge at this, but she lets it slide.

“I’m Martha… Liesel’s mother,” the woman says. “I… I want to thank you for trying to help yesterday. It is a special kind of soul who stands up despite such horrors.”

Jester feels a great rush of emotion at that, and for a moment she wants nothing more than to give Martha a giant hug, but she holds back.

“I’m really sorry about your daughter, Mrs Mündermann.” Is all she manages to say.

Martha gives her half a smile, and Jester sees the redness in her eyes that betrays recent tears.

“Thank you,” Martha says softly, and then she steps aside. She opens the door more, widening a path for Jester to enter the house. “Do come in, uh…”

“Jester,” Jester supplies. Martha nods faintly. “Thank you for having me in your home, Mrs Mündermann! It’s very lovely!”

She follows Martha into the entrance, and notices for the first time the woman’s manner of dress; her sleeves are rolled to her elbows and her skirts are tied up well above her ankles, he arms are bare, but covered in flour.

“I’m sorry,” Jester says, gesturing to the flour. “Did I interrupt you in the middle of something?”

“Just some baking,” Martha says, and despite the dour mood Jester’s heart flutters. “But don’t worry, Liesel isn’t far.”

Jester can’t help the rush of emotion that comes from the word “baking” but Martha is already steering her through the house before she can ask more questions.

The layout of the house is somewhat like what Jester had been able to glean of Caleb’s old one; a sitting room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, and stairs that likely led up to bedrooms. This house is much bigger though.

The kitchen is bigger too, and it’s so much more alive—full of the smell of fresh baking and spices—but Jester is ushered out and through the back door almost immediately.

The backyard is gorgeous. The kitchen backs out onto a large stoop with little stone steps that lead to a well looked after back garden. The property has fewer trees than Caleb’s house, meaning the meagre afternoon sun is still felt on the rows and rows of vegetables sprawled out in front of Jester. Beyond the garden is a back fence and a field of sheep that disappear up into the foothills beyond. Even through the mist, Jester can still see how much space they have to enjoy.

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

“Thank you,” Martha smiles sadly. “Please, follow me.”

She leads Jester down around the front of the stoop where a small chicken coop is built on stilts near a patch of vegetables. A young girl is sitting up by the entrance wearing an odd combination of a delicate white smock, dirty work boots, and a heavy coat. Her knees are caked in dirt and grass stains, but she looks far cleaner than the last time Jester saw her.

“Liesel!” Martha calls, making the young girl look up from something in her hands. “Miss Jester is here.”

“Y-you’re the healer?” Liesel mumbles. Jester puts on her brightest, softest smile and nods. Liesel nods too, not looking like she knows where to go from here.

“It’s good to see you again, Liesel, I’m Jester,” Jester tries. “I was worried about you, you know!”

Liesel looks a bit shocked. “You were?”

“Of course!”

Martha puts a hand on Jester’s shoulder and smiles. “I’ll leave you to it,” she says, and heads back inside.

Jester meanders over to awkwardly stand at Liesel’s side. The girl is around Jester’s height but looks much smaller sitting down. Her hair, now clean of blood and grime, is a lovely shade of pale blonde. But nothing about her seems happy, or youthful, or bright. She looks, instead, like the saddest thing Jester has ever seen.

“How old are you?” Jester asks out of nowhere_. Great fucking start,_ she thinks to herself when Liesel jolts in surprise.

“T-thirteen… h-how old are you?”

_At least we’re both awkward. _

“Promise not to tell my friends?” Liesel looks momentarily confused, but nods. “I’m twenty-one! And also eight months, but that’s not super important, I guess.”

Liesel blinks. “Why… why don’t you want your friends to know how old you are?”

Jester winks. “I’m trying to maintain an aura of mystery.”

Liesel gives half a smile, which falls very quickly.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Miss Jester,” Liesel says. “I’ve never seen a tiefling before, so I might’ve been rude.”

“That’s alright,” Jester says, and she takes this moment to sit down beside Liesel. “I’m getting the impression a lot of people around here haven’t. And just Jester is fine.”

Liesel looks down at her hands.

“Whatcha got there?” Jester asks. Liesel says nothing, but opens up her hands to Jester, revealing a small, fluffy chick nestled in the crook of her thumb.

Jester makes a high-pitched noise and bites her tongue to stop from squealing. “Omigosh, that is _adorable_,” she whines.

Liesel holds the chick close to her chest. “Hana and I were gonna help look after them together.”

The mood sours immediately.

“Oh… oh, Liesel,” Jester says. “I’m so sorry.”

Liesel sniffs. “We were, uh, we were going to introduce them to the barn cats today. We get them used to them so they know to protect them from rats and things and not to eat them.”

“You have cats?”

“Yeah, hold on.”

Liesel ducks her head down under the stilts of the chicken coop and makes the _pstpstpst_ noise that never seems to work on Frumpkin. A few moments later a little calico cat comes slinking out from the shadows. Jester is in love immediately.

“Aww!” Jester holds out her hand for the cat to sniff. It bumps its nose up against one of her many rings and begins to rub its cheeks on them. “What’s his name?”

“Her name is Lettuce,” Liesel says fondly.

_Oh that’s absolutely amazing, _Jester thinks, _but don’t laugh, she’ll think you’re making fun of the name. _

“That’s a good name. I don’t have any cats, just a weasel and a dog. My friend has a cat named Frumpkin, though” she says. “He’s magic.”

Liesel scritches Lettuce’s head. “Your friend or the cat?”

Jester grins slyly. “Both, believe it or not.”

Liesel smiles. It’s a little nervous and a little shaky, but it’s a smile. It makes Jester’s heart fucking _soar_.

“So, you _are_ magic, then… all of you? B-because you said you were a healer and you fixed my hands, right?” Liesel looks a little frazzled as she speaks, eyes flitting across Jester’s face to read the woman’s expression. Jester thinks she knows where this is going, but she doesn’t like it.

“But you can’t… you couldn’t heal Hana? Are… are you sure?”

_There are unfixable things in this world,_ the Traveler says in the back of her mind.

“Sometimes we’re just too late,” Jester says. “I’m sorry, Liesel, but there wasn’t anything we could do.”

Liesel tries to smile again, but it’s weak and broken by tears.

“It’s my fault,” the girl says. With trembling hands she leans over to deposit the chick back in the coop. “I wanted to go pick mountain mallow because it only grows at the Ermendrud house, and Hana didn’t want to, but I made her come. She wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me. It’s my fault she’s dead.”

Jester looks out over the garden, at the gentle breeze rustling through the newly sprouting vegetables. The mist is clearing a little, and the wildflowers, like little dots of colourful paint, are becoming visible in the fields in the distance.

“Can I tell you a story?” Jester says abruptly.

“Y-Yeah, sure…”

“I… I had a very good friend who died,” Jester begins, not really knowing where she’s going but feeling an urge to fill this silence with something. “He was killed by an awful person – I wouldn’t even call him a _person_; he was more like a _monster_…”

She realises she’s getting too angry and cuts herself off. “I’m sorry,” she says. “This isn’t about me.”

“N-no… k-keep going…” Liesel has pulled Lettuce onto her lap, holding her closely.

“Okay, well. My friend was a tiefling, like me. But he was purple, not blue, and also taller…? And a boy. Sort of.”

_Focus, Jester. _

“I hadn’t met many other tieflings besides my momma, so I thought he was really cool! He could read fortunes and he fought with swords and he always dressed as crazy as possible…” Jester lets the words tumble out, and even though she can hear her own voice wavering with unshed tears, a smile plays across her lips at the memory. “But then last winter, I got… I got separated from our group.”

Liesel looks on with rapt attention, which makes it both easier and harder for Jester to continue.

“While I was away… he died. And I’m a healer, you know, so if I had been there, I think he might not have died? And sometimes I still think about it… like, what if I had been strong enough to be there… but… It’s not my fault. And Hana wasn’t _your_ fault. You’re strong and you did everything you could but... sometimes what we can do just isn’t enough. You can’t beat yourself up over something you can’t change, Liesel…”

_Like your sister… I couldn’t save your sister… she was so far gone, and I feel oh so terrible, but I couldn’t fix her… just like I can’t fix—_

Liesel looks up at her with tears brimming in her wide blue eyes and Jester’s heart flutters. She bites off her rapidly spiralling train of thought and tries to recover. What had she been saying? Oh, right.

“You just have to keep moving, okay?” Jester says brightly.

Liesel nods. She looks down at her hands, and then back at Jester.

“Can I hug you?” She asks in the smallest voice imaginable.

Jester giggles, and it’s as much a show of mirth as it is a genuine release of tension. “Of course!”

Liesel doesn’t wait for any further cue. She lets go of Lettuce and surges forward, wrapping her arms around Jester’s midsection and holding herself close to the older girl’s chest.

Jester brings her arms up to embrace Liesel, running her hands lightly over her tangled blonde hair.

“I just miss her so much,” Liesel sobs.

Jester doesn’t quite know what to say, so she just holds Liesel tighter.

“Ah, now this is nice,” says a voice behind them.

The girls break apart and turn to see Martha stepping out onto the porch, a large plate clutched in her hands. There’s steam rising from it and Jester is immediately assailed by the smell of fresh-baked _something_.

“I made strudel,” she says with a weak smile. Jester is floored by her composure—how she’s somehow keeping up this face for her daughter. She wants to hug her again.

“For us?” Liesel says, wiping away fresh tears on her sleeve.

“No, for the chickens,” Martha chides good-naturedly. “Yes for you! Get up here, my love.”

Liesel trots over and takes a small pastry from the plate.

“You too, Jester,” Martha says.

Jester is on her feet in an instant. “You do _not_ have to tell me twice.”

The pastries are small and square, and when Jester bites into one she almost cries. It’s soft and flaky and _full_ of berry jam. She resolves to punch Caleb later for not taking her to a bakery here on the first day.

“This is _delicious_, Mrs Mündermann.”

Martha laughs. “Thank you. I’d insist you join us for a meal, but I’m sure your friends are waiting for you.”

Jester nods. “They are, yes, but thank you anyway.”

“Here.” Martha leads the two girls inside and Jester is barely through the doorway into the kitchen when a wicker basket, full of fresh breads and a few pastries, is thrust into her arms.

“Take this for your friends,” she says. “I’m sure that awful Müller woman has you locked up on rations or such like.”

Jester smiles at the insult. “I can’t possibly—”

“Just take it,” Liesel whispers. Lettuce meows.

“Okay,” Jester giggles, shifting the basket in her grip. “If the young lady insists.”

“Good afternoon,” comes a new voice.

Jester looks around to see Hans Mündermann standing in the door to the kitchen, dressed in dirtied farm clothes and a well-worn coat. He narrows his eyes at her, and she feels herself begin to sweat.

Hans is still the brick of a man he was two days ago, but he looks profoundly sadder. Jester swallows nervously, watching his eyes rake over her whole body, stopping on her horns and her tail like everyone else. But then he meets her eyes, and they’re sad and strong at the same time and she can’t help but feel sorry for him.

The whole family is like that, she thinks, sad and strong at the same time.

_Good in a crisis,_ Beau had said.

“You must be the cleric,” he says.

“Y-yes, my name is Jester.”

Hans walks over to her, and Martha opens her mouth to say something, but then Hans holds his hand out.

It takes Jester a moment to realise what he’s asking of her, but then it clicks. She wiggles one hand out of the basket handles and tentatively takes him by the forearm — the way she’d seen Caleb do — and he shakes her hand.

“Thank you for doing what you could for my daughters,” he says. “It’s more than we can ask of strangers.”

“I wish I could’ve done more,” she says weakly. _I don’t deserve these thanks, _she thinks.

“Maybe you can,” he says simply, releasing her much smaller arm from his grip.

_“Hans,”_ Martha says in a warning tone.

_“Martha,”_ Hans echoes her tone. He turns back to Jester, giving her another appraising look. “Do you know what did it? You and your friends are mercenaries, yes? You know this sort of thing?”

Jester knows she could lie and they’d probably believe her, but Caduceus had talked about a different kind of healing. The hardest thing you have to do as a healer is deliver bad news. Right now that bad news is the truth.

“A dog,” she says. “A big one. We went looking for it last night, but it got away.”

Martha gasps and Liesel goes white.

“N-not a wolf?” Martha murmurs. “Angela said it might be wolves?”

Jester shakes her head. “No, it was… really big, like, _super_ big. Like a bear. But bigger.”

“I didn’t see a big dog, though…” Liesel whispers. “I would have seen it, right?”

“It sort of… like, melded with the shadows,” Jester does an odd hand gesture that doesn’t help illustrate the point at all. “It was hard to see.”

The Mündermann parents share a glance, then Hans speaks.

“How familiar are you with northern folklore?” He asks.

“Uh… not very?”

“Right, well, you might be able to get that rude friend of yours to tell you more.” Usually that’s code for Beau, but judging by who out of the six of them Hans has actually spoken to Jester supposes he means Caleb. “But for now, I’ll just give you this.”

He turns around and beckons her to follow him further inside the house. Jester obliges, giving Liesel one last smile before trailing after Hans’s receding form.

She follows him into one of the sitting rooms, where a modest bookshelf is wedged behind a frayed armchair. Hans walks over and selects one of the titles, pulling it out and handing it to Jester.

“A book?”

Hans grunts affirmatively. “It’s about local legends and such, my grandmother was into that sort of thing — left us her book collection after she passed even though we’re not… uh, let’s say _big_ _readers_.”

Jester recalls Molly once saying something similar, so she thinks Hans means he can’t read. _That’s fine though, _she thinks, and she takes the book gratefully.

It’s in Zemnian, so _she_ can’t really read it either. The cover is bound in thin, dark leather and embossed with an odd crest. The thing is quite sizeable, as far as books go; much bigger than Tusk Love.

Jester opens it up and flicks through a few pages, immediately disappointed by the lack of pictures.

Hans reaches over and flips the book open to a specific chapter. It’s really just walls of text Jester can’t understand, but the title at the head of the page catches her eye. _Bahr-Geist._

“There’s an old story about strange dogs that haunt byways and graveyards and such. We call them barghests.”

“Barghests?”

“Nasty things. Never seen one myself, but if you’re saying this wasn’t wolves, I’d put my money on it being this.”

“Not werewolves?”

“No werewolves in Blumenthal.”

“What about vampires?”

Hans frowns. “Are you taking this seriously?”

“Yep!” Jester almost yelps.

Hans sighs and sinks into the threadbare armchair. Jester can see the age and sadness in him now. It makes her heart hurt. “I’ll give you your money back and give you the horses for free if you kill that thing.”

Jester blanches, not sure she heard right for a moment. “What? F-for real? What about the mayor?”

“I don’t care about the mayor,” Hans says grimly. “She’s treating this like a regular livestock attack, but this is my _family_. My _daughter_. And if she’s not going to do anything about it someone else has to.”

Jester looks back down at the book in her hands.

“What _are_ barghests, exactly?”

“Great big black dogs, bigger than bears like you said,” Hans says. “Shadowy things. That sound like what you saw?”

Jester nods.

“They’re supposed to be violent; some say they foretell death.”

That pit is back, growing in Jester’s stomach with every passing second. “How do they do that?”

“If you see them, hear them howl, it’s supposed to mean someone you know is about to die.”

“O-oh.”

Jester thanks Hans for the book and Martha for the food and Liesel for the talk and then she runs. She runs all the way back to town and does not stop until she’s on the steps on the temple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave you so much dead mom content in the last chapter so Martha is my attempt at an apology. 
> 
> For reference because it's not named, the spell Nott is talking about is Programmed Illusion, a 6th level illusion spell. 
> 
> I decided to write this fic as a multi-chapter after the Episode 77 Talks, which had all-round great insight into where Caleb and Jester are currently at, but it was almost entirely because of Laura’s comment about Jester encouraging emotional expression in her friends but thinking her own sadness is something to be ashamed of. Jester’s double-standard regarding her own emotions is pretty fascinating and really sad! I like the idea of her desire to make people happy, to “fix” them in a way, coming up against the part of Caleb that is SOOO not about that. It’s a bit of an immovable object meet unstoppable force situation. I'm excited to see if it ever comes to a head in the show.


	6. this town is only gonna eat you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Get out, get gone, _   
_This town is only gonna get worse. _   
_Get out, get gone, _   
_This town is only gonna eat you. _
> 
> — “Bloody Shirt”, To Kill A King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the Mighty Nein get taken to church and I fire up the Sad Dad Button.
> 
> I finished writing this chapter on the train from Bergen to Oslo and let me tell you, spending seven whole-ass hours in dramatic snowy mountains is making me wish I could’ve set this fic in winter. 
> 
> I’m (ironically) on my way to Germany for a while, so the next chapter will probably be wee ways away and i'll have to make some minor pacing edits to this one before I do. A fun bonus for you all though is that I’ve made my inspo playlist for this fic public! If you’re interested, you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/46cxhuCmeNaIbqaWPi3J8w?si=9GX-eRDjS4WARbEj-TZa0A)
> 
> Without further ado: back to the bullshit!

Caleb keeps his hood up the entire walk to the temple of Erathis.

The action gains him more than a few curious glances from the crownsguard woman they’ve convinced to escort them, which is annoying, but the small shred of anonymity it gives him is worth any discomfort.

_Most people thought I looked like my father,_ he’d told Nott the night before.

It’s true. He has his mother’s red hair and blue eyes, but the lines of his face are in equal part Leofric’s. Caleb hopes the punishing march of time and over a decade of malnourishment has worn him enough to turn that stark resemblance into an un-noteworthy one, but at least the hood can put his heart at ease a bit if not.

Because there are still people here that he _knows_, and now that they’re out of their disguises and walking through the streets in the light of day he actually might have to come face to face with that terrifying notion. There’s Hans, of course, who hadn’t recognized him in disguise but _thank the Gods_ it’s Jester going to his house now and not Caleb because he doesn’t think he’d be quite so lucky a second time. There had been at least a dozen people he’d vaguely recognised in the tavern at lunch. He even knows Müller, who had been a newly hired town hall clerk in the year or two before Soltryce, but thankfully she hadn’t seemed to piece anything together.

Blumenthal is a small town where memories are long, where businesses stay in the family and families stay together and people live and die in the valley without ever seeing the world outside of it. It’s one people don’t generally have cause to leave.

At least most of the time. _He’d_ left, after all.

For that reason, he’s glad they’re heading to the temple; it’s not a place he ever frequented as a child, despite it being one of Jester’s proclaimed “three interesting things in Blumenthal”. His parents hadn’t been especially religious—a trait they had passed on to him—and as he had tended to go where they went, the temple to the Lawbearer had never been one of Bren’s hangout spots.

It’s not exactly Caleb’s idea of a good time either.

He’s not religious, but right now he’s praying no one in the clergy will have known his family well enough to curse his mortal soul on the spot.

After all, the goddess of law probably isn’t his biggest fan.

“Oh. Before I forget,” comes Caduceus’s rumbling voice, snatching Caleb out of his paranoid internal monologue.

There’s a hand on the top of his head and before he can react his body is suddenly awash with a warm wave of healing magic.

It’s a soft, curling breeze-like thing that starts at the crown of his head and flows down to his fingers and toes, carrying with it the pleasant scent of summer grasses and the bitter taste of tea leaves. It’s uniquely Caduceus.

Caleb feels _Greater Restoration _pull away layers of hurt from his body. He blinks once… twice… and it’s like waking up from a sleep he hadn’t known he’d been taking. Colour leeches back into the world around him, he stops feeling his rabbit-fast heartbeat in his chest, and he properly exhales for what feels like the first time in days.

“Wow,” is all he says.

“Feel better?” Caduceus asks, retracting his hand back to his side.

“Uh, _ja,_ much better,” Caleb replies, smacking his lips together a few times to get the bitter taste out of his mouth. “A lot better. Thank you.”

“Good. Sorry for springing it on you, but I was worried you might change your mind about taking the restoration.”

Caleb wants to argue, but somewhere deep down he knows Caduceus is probably right. He _still_ doesn’t feel too great about taking the spell.

“Sure,” he says. He consciously straightens his posture, realising for the first time that he had been uncomfortably stooped over.

“Whatever it was, it was definitely a curse or spell of some kind,” Caduceus reports, with all the gravity of someone commenting on the weather. Caleb feels a chill and hears Nott squawk from her place at his side.

“A curse?” She hisses.

Caduceus nods. “I don’t think it’s all gone, but I think that got a good chunk of whatever it was.”

Caleb is inclined to agree. He takes a deep breath, inhaling deeper than he has in a long time, properly feeling the sharp chill in the air as it mingles with what’s left of Caduceus’s magic.

“If it’s a curse that leaves the question of who fucking put it on you,” Beau chimes in from the front of their little pack, where she’s exercising her right to peaceful protest by walking as close to the crownsguard’s heels as possible. “Think it’s the same motherfucker planting fake ghosts at the house?”

“Perhaps,” Caleb says slowly.

“I mean… it’ll make all this shit a lot easier if it’s one person doing everything,” says Beau.

“One person is easier to handle than two,” Caduceus agrees. “But I’m wary of the kind of person that could be controlling a creature like that.”

Beau hums thoughtfully. “_I’m_ wary of how a mage who is powerful enough to cast illusions Nott can’t do and Caleb hasn’t even heard of has managed to hide themselves here for God knows how long.”

Caleb smirks at the implied praise despite himself. “Your faith in mine and Nott’s abilities is appreciated, Beauregard,” he says softly, “but we are probably not dealing with an incredibly formidable mage. It is likely someone around our level of capabilities.”

Beau looks back over her shoulder to shoot him and Nott a wink. “It’s cute that you think we’re not formidable.”

This earns a little group-wide chuckle of amusement, which Beau smiles at before turning back to bothering the crownsguard woman.

“So, we’re sorted!” she drawls back to them. “Now that you’re not literally dying of exhaustion you ready to fuckin’ demolish these records?”

“Please do not demolish the records,” the crownsguard woman says suddenly, disdain dripping from her accented voice.

They all jump, and Beau whirls on her, looking aghast.

“Wait, you speak Common?”

“_Ja_. Some.” The crownsguard woman looks like she’s actively trying not to roll her eyes. “Let us move on before I change my mind about letting you five out of the inn.”

They shut up, in their own way, falling back into occasional, muted conversation as they follow the crownsguard through the narrow streets. The realisation that their guide can understand them dissuades them from discussing anything sensitive, but it doesn’t stop Beau from resuming her attempts to step on the woman’s toes. 

The reach the church soon after. Though it’s not they first time they’ve seen it in their time here, it’s the first time the Mighty Nein have had cause to stop at it, and as they wander into the long shadow of its steeple Caleb is almost instantly on edge.

It’s a humble stone thing, not particularly flashy, but built far sturdier than probably any other building in town. It’s one of the oldest too if Caleb remembers correctly; as they are led through the wrought iron gate into the temple’s courtyard he spots the etchings and date markings on a few of the stones in the walls, marking the heights of particularly destructive floods dating back a good few hundred years.

There is a single steeple, towering high above their heads and topped with a gnarled vane. Inside the tower, where other temples may have placed bells or lights, the temple of the Lawbearer holds a pair of giant iron scales. Ornamental, Caleb figures, but what isn’t in a place like this?

They wander through the small courtyard, through rows of old headstones from the temple’s dilapidated graveyard—no longer used by the town, even in Caleb’s youth—just another reminder of how _old_ this place is.

The crownsguard escorts them up the flagstone steps to the humble wooden doors at the front of the temple. They’re worn and a dark brown, but bear the evidence of having at one point been painted red. The crownsguard knocks once, then opens the door.

“Hey, Caleb.”

Nott stops Caleb before he can start climbing the steps and pulls him aside. 

“Are you really feeling better?” she asks in a low voice. “Or are you doing that thing where you lie because you think you’re bothering us?”

“I am fine, Nott,” he replies. “I assure you.”

She gives him a calculating look, then changes the subject. “Okay. I wanted to talk to you about something else though.”

She looks over her shoulder to see the crownsguard ushering Beau, Caduceus, and Fjord through the double doors, she stares down at Nott and Caleb and narrows her eyes, obviously impatient.

“O-one minute, please,” Caleb stammers. The woman grunts, but doesn’t move to stop them, which is good in Caleb’s books. He turns his attention back to Nott.

“How trustworthy are these Erathis people?” She asks in a low voice.

“I am… not sure,” Caleb admits. “More trustworthy than Müller. Or, at least more receptive.”

Nott smirks. “I’m getting the feeling not everyone in town likes her.”

“So am I,” Caleb muses. It’s interesting; the previous mayor, Johann Bauer, had been relatively well-liked, but his brusque successor didn’t seem to be getting the same treatment. “We might be able to use that to our advantage.”

“Do you want to?”

Caleb blanches. “Want to what?”

“Use that to our advantage?” Nott looks nervous for a second—almost bashful—before she continues. “Caleb… what if—what If we just cut our losses and _run?_ What’s stopping us, really?”

“Müller will follow through on her threats. If we leave the crownsguard in Rexxentrum will be notified.”

Nott looks exasperated.

“Yeah, of the names we gave them! Nott is _no one_, and neither is Caleb! It’s not like we gave them traceable names—_real _names, right? Why can’t we just… I don’t know…”

Caleb wants to point out that they’ve both used their aliases enough by now that they’re nothing if not real—that they’re enough to have a reputation—but he suspected Nott already knows that. This is something else.

“Nott. This isn’t like you.”

Nott sighs, twirling one of her illusory braids around her finger. “I know,” she says. “It’s just… Caleb, we’ve been here _two nights_… two! And you’ve been fucking cursed and we’ve been attacked, and a little girl _died_.”

Her voice cracks a little on the last word.

“Listen, Caleb, I—I’m with you. I’m with you no matter what you decide to do, but I this is _a lot_ and I just want to make sure you’re here for the right reasons.”

“Are you sticking around because you want to help the town? Or are you here because you’ve got it in your head that this is your fault?”

“Why can’t it be a little of both?”

“Because it’s _not_ your fault Caleb.”

“Someone is hiding something in my parents’ house, Nott. Someone is spreading fear and using my mother’s image to do so… and—and that very same someone is probably responsible for the beast that killed Hana. None of this would have happened without me. I am not the perpetrator, sure, but I am the catalyst.”

Nott looks at him for a long time, illusory brown eyes just as piercing as her usual yellow ones.

“You’re very smart, Caleb,” she says, expression just a little bit sad. “But you’re terrible at blaming the right people.”

_“Ja,”_ he says, breaking eye contact to look back at the guard, who isn’t even paying attention to them at this point. “I’ve been told.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Nott frown, and then hears her sigh.

“Let’s get inside before Beau gets us kicked out,” she says. Caleb nods mutely.

The guard opens the door for them as they approach and waves them inside before turning to Caleb and speaking in Zemnian.

_“When should I tell Lady Müller you will be finished at the temple?”_

Caleb hadn’t thought about how long they’d be – nor did he think about the fact Müller is probably going to be notified. Shit.

_“We may be a few hours,” _Caleb replies_. “I’m not sure.”_

The crownsguard narrows her eyes, fixing her steely glare directly at Caleb._ “You will be done by nightfall,” _she says, apparently making the decision for him._ “Good day, Herr Widogast.”_

Caleb nods, not really knowing what else to do._ “Au-auf wiedersehen?”_

She does not answer, and a moment later the old oak door of the temple is shut in Caleb’s face.

“She was nice,” Nott says bitterly. She wraps her jackets—illusory and real—around herself tighter and turns to head into the temple proper.

Blumenthal’s temple of Erathis is a little less humble on the inside than it is on the outside. There is care here—maybe not _recent_ care but care all the same. Lacquered, warm wood lines the walls and makes up the beams and supports that stretch to the rafters above. It almost glows with the abundant light coming from rows and rows of both candelabras and loose candles, hanging from chandeliers or lining the walls and tables and seats within.

Tapestries of fine, grey wool hang from some of the walls, with the largest up front, behind the altar, depicting a beautifully detailed rendering of the Lawbearer’s symbol. The other members of the Mighty Nein are standing near it, idling in front of the altar and staring up at their surroundings with mixed expressions ranging from boredom to fully vested interest.

Caleb and Nott join the others.

“No one home?” Nott asks as they approach.

“Nah,” Beau reports. She nods to the wall with the large tapestry, below which is a small oaken door. “Think we should knock?”

Fjord speaks up for what Caleb realises is the first time in a while. He tries not to read into that.

“No, we should be good to just…” he raps his knuckles on the wooden altar, the sounding echoing in the small space before he calls out. “Hello?! Uh, wait, _H-Hallo_?!”

“It’s the same word, Fjord,” Beau stifles a laugh. “You probably don’t need to switch.”

Fjord flushes slightly. “It’s polite!”

Before Beau can shoot out another retort the small interior is filled with the sounds of footstep, and a moment later the door opens with the groan of wood and the squeak of worn metal hinges.

Two men emerge from the small doorway. The first is an elderly human with wispy grey hair, maybe in his late 70s, that Caleb vaguely recognizes, but not enough to place his name. The second is a far younger man Caleb doesn’t know, probably only a little older than Fjord or himself, with slightly pointed ears denoting elven heritage. They are both dressed in simple grey robes, clasped together at the front with small, decorative brass scales. The older man smiles as he sees the group, a big, kind grin that stretches from ear to ear.

_“Hallo,_ my friends!” he says with a chuckle. Fjord elbows Beau at the Zemnian greeting. “I was wondering when we would be meeting you! The… what was your name?”

“The Mighty Nein,” say Fjord, Beau and Caduceus at the same time.

There’s a little pause in which the elven man, who looks at them a little more warily than his older companion, leans close to the older man’s ear and whispers in Zemnian,_ “But Father, there are only five of them.”_

Caleb can’t help but smile at that.

_“It’s Zemnian,”_ he says, making the speaker jump a little. “_Nein_, not _neun_.”

This doesn’t seem to help the elven man’s confusion. _“You are called the_ Mighty No?”

“Y-yes?”

“Oh, _that’s _what it means,” Caduceus says, chuckling to himself. “That makes more sense.”

Beau looks up at him incredulously. “Wait, you _seriously_ just realised that?”

“Yeah, I just figured we just used to have a few other members.”

Beau looks a bit put out, then schools her face back into its usual frown. “It’s not funny if you explain the joke.”

Nott laughs. “_What_ joke?”

“Anyway!” Fjord interrupts in his Leader Voice, clearing his throat to cut Beau and Nott off before things get out of hand. “My name is Fjord, thank you for having us here.”

“It is our pleasure to host travellers,” the older priest says. He extends his hand and Fjord takes it. “Especially ones as kind as you. My name is Father Alphonse, this is Brother Albert. May I ask the names of your companions, Herr Fjord?”

“I’m Beau,” Beau says, stepping forward to take Alphonse’s hand after Fjord.

“I-I’m Nott, and this is Caleb,” Nott squawks from behind Caleb’s coat. He’s not quite sure why she felt she needed to introduce him on his behalf, but he’s not about to call her on it when she’s so clearly hiding.

Nott is scared but the priests—at least not Alphonse—don’t seem to be as outwardly distrustful of them as some of the other townsfolk, which doesn’t surprise Caleb. The priests, like the crownsguard, are always the most worldly in towns like Blumenthal. They are the ones who studied and the ones who travelled, they are the ones who spoke the Common tongue. He supposes if anyone in town is to be accepting of half-orcs and firbolgs and the like it would be the men of faith who had seen folks like them before.

They turn to him, maybe also caught a little off guard by Nott’s nervous introduction.

_“Ja,_ I am Caleb… Widogast.” He tacks the last name on the end like he always does—more habit than anything else. “It is good to meet you.”

“Caduceus Clay,” says Caduceus, free with information as always. “May I just say… your temple is beautiful.”

It’s not what Caleb would call beautiful, exactly, though it is nice. He wonders if it’s making Caduceus think of his own home. It has that same ramshackle quality – that same well-loved and ancient visage.

Alphonse seems pleased and he steps forward to shake Caduceus’s hand, but stops halfway, eyes travelling up the firbolg’s lithe form to his ear, where – Caleb realises with a jolt – the symbol of the Wildmother is pierced through the lobe.

_“Mein gott...”_ Alphonse whispers. “A worshipper of Mellora in my temple…”

The group tenses, and Caleb doesn’t miss Beau’s hand begin to drift back towards her staff—nor does he miss the feeling of Nott shifting her bow from her shoulder under his coat. But amidst the tension, Caduceus only smiles wider.

“Indeed,” he says, which makes Caleb’s guts twist. Had they not explained the banned deities to Caduceus? He should have and he’s mentally kicking himself for being so stupid.

“It’s wonderful to be here,” Caduceus continues sagely, voice warm and rumbling in the tiny temple. “I never thought I’d have the pleasure of seeing a temple of Erathis in my lifetime.”

Now that stops the Nein in their tracks. Caleb exchanges a glance with Beau, who shrugs.

After a brief moment of silent back and forth, Beau bites the bullet. “Wait, so, uh, you’re not gonna like, turn him in or whatever? Unapproved deity and all?”

Caduceus just laughs. “Perhaps another temple would, but the relationship between Mellora and Erathis is a special one.”

“What kind of special?” Fjord asks, sounding incredibly intrigued.

From next to Alphonse, Albert waggles his eyebrows suggestively. The other two men seem to accept this as an appropriate answer and do not elaborate. Beau lets out a quick bark of a laugh.

“Gods are allowed to do that?!” she exclaims. Caduceus chuckles.

“Sure.”

Beau smirks. “Nice.”

Now it’s Caleb’s turn to clear his throat. He turns to Alphonse, keeping his head low enough to cast his face in some semblance of shadow

“Father,” he says. “I am grateful for your leniency… it is, not common.”

“It is nothing to worry about, my son,” Alphonse says with a smile. “It would not be becoming for followers of the Lawbearer to turn away worshippers of the Wildmother, would it?”

Caleb lets the implication they all follow the Wildmother slide, thinking it will probably be useful. He’s gearing up to ask about the records, but Father Alphonse isn’t done.

“There was another with you, _ja?_ A blue woman?” he asks. “We were there yesterday morning and saw you trying to help the young Mündermann girls.”

“Yes, that’s Jester,” Fjord explains. “She’s another friend of ours.”

“Another cleric of Mellora?”

The Nein exchange a few glances, taking long enough of a pause that their silence is enough of a “no”. Alphonse just smiles a little bit wider, though.

“That is no matter.” Alphonse waves any fear away, though Albert looks a bit worried at his superior’s nonchalant attitude. “We are a house of faith, not politics.”

“Thank you, Father,” Caduceus says warmly.

“You are most welcome. However, I _would_ appreciate keeping our involvement in your dealings quiet.”

“Of course,” says Fjord.

Alphonse turns back to Caleb, who turtles a little further into his hood. “I’m sorry, Herr Widogast, you were going to say something?”

“Uh, ja, I was going to ask if we might be able to access your records. I’m aware you keep some regarding the town?”

“We do,” Alphonse says with a short nod. “May I ask why?”

“We’ve encountered… interesting magic in this town,” Caleb says carefully, focusing not on Alphonse’s eyes but on a pockmark scar just beneath his left one. “We would like to examine records from some specific… _times_… we think might be relevant.”

“Of course,” Alphonse says. “Our repository is open to the public, but may I ask why you are not at the town hall? Their records are a bit more extensive than ours.”

“We, uh, don’t have the best working relationship with the lady mayor,” Beau says. To only the mild surprise of the Nein, both Alphonse and Albert nod.

“Not surprising,” Alphonse says. “Regardless, I will be happy to send you back with Albert to peruse the records. Will all of you be working?”

Fjord speaks up at that.

“I would actually love to talk to you, Father, about what you know of the Wildmother—I’m only a recent follower of her myself and I think your perspective would be, uh, _unique_.” He looks to Caduceus for some kind of aid but, finding none, just smiles his most polite smile at Alphonse.

“I wouldn’t mind speaking to you as well, Father,” Caduceus adds. “I feel like you might be well-versed in the folklore of this area and I have a few questions.

Alphonse agrees, seeming eager to speak to the now two followers of Mellora who have found their way to his temple. He shoots a few instructions to Albert, who Caleb assumes is going to be their guide through whatever passes for an archive in this very small temple.

Albert nods to the girls and Caleb to follow him and Caleb shoots a final glance back to Caduceus and Fjord.

Fjord has his back to them, and Caleb realises that his request to Alphonse had been the longest Fjord had spoken outloud all morning.

Caleb just wishes Fjord would say something to _him_.

Or maybe he _doesn’t_.

He gets it. He really does. It is no hidden thing that Fjord holds the idea of family to an almost reverent standard, as a man who had never had a chance to have one in the first place.

He’d dreaded Fjord’s reaction, whatever it may have been. But the reality? This… non-reaction…? It’s almost worse than the scenarios he had imagined.

But what is he supposed to do about it?

Caduceus and Fjord stay behind with Alphonse as Albert leads Caleb, Nott, and Beau back through the door deeper into the temple.

They follow the young priest through a short, curved stone hallway, lined on both sides by simple wooden door, and arrive quickly at a second, smaller chamber. It’s lined with the same lacquered wood walls, but a notable change is that in the place of tapestries are towering shelves of scrolls and tomes. Caleb’s heart flutters at the sight, even though he knows most are probably ledgers and itineraries.

Albert spins on his heel, bringing the little tour to an abrupt stop as he leans back against one of the long worktables in the center of the room.

“So, what are you looking for exactly?” he asks.

Beau takes the lead.

“For starters: are there any magic users in town that you know of?” Beau butts in. “If there aren’t any here now were there any around at some point?”

“Hmm, that is an interesting question…” he says, and then he turns and wanders back through the rows of scrolls and tomes, only a brief wave in their direction telling Caleb, Beau and Nott they are permitted to follow.

Albert talks as he walks.

“Magicians do not tend to stay in places like Blumenthal. Those who manifest magic are wont to seek larger horizons, _ja?_ They go to the capital or to Zadash or other cities of their ilk. I think the Father would like to have nature-inclined folks such as your friends around to help us in the farms, but that is not how the world works.”

Caleb wonders if he should say something. Take the priest aside, tell him to kick them all out now, because the Empire doesn’t give two shits about Erathis’s loyalties—only its own.

But he doesn’t say anything, he just hunches deeper into his scarf and catches Nott’s worried glances.

Albert continues to chatter while he leads them into the very back of the repository.

“The last proper magic users I can recall here were a group of local children who left to attend the Soltryce Academy. It was quite the news. I lived to the south at the time, and even we heard about it.”

Caleb’s breath catches in his throat. Albert takes no notice, pulling a tome off the shelf and starting to thumb through it.

“Let’s see… No, not this one…”

He puts it back, and pulls down three more, flipping through them at speed.

“What are they?” Nott asks softly, leaning against Caleb’s side. “The books, I mean?”

Caleb can feel his pulse in his throat as he answers. He recognises them, of course. “They’re birth and death ledgers.”

“Here it is,” he says. He turns one of the books around and taps the page. Under his finger, written in small, tidy script:

_Leofric Ermendrud & Una Ermendrud (née Roth). Date of death: 14/8/820. Cause of death: house fire._

_Survived by their son, Bren A. Ermendrud. _

And then, next to his name, in a different handwriting:_ presumed dead, 821. See newer records. _

Caleb tamps down the desire to ask to see his own death certificate in favour of just being flat out affronted by the sight of his parents’. He’d known that was what Albert had been looking for, but seeing it with his own eyes? Looking at their deaths, reduced to names on a page, stirs something awful and sick inside him.

They had been not that much older than he is now, now that he looks down at the page, looks down at their ages—their lifespans. They had been in their late thirties, having had him right out of their teens. It’s a bit jarring, he realises, to see plain on the paper how close he is to outliving them.

He schools his expression and is just about to ask to see the page when Albert abruptly turns to the next one.

“The Ermendrud’s son survived until the following year, when he was presumed to have died in the capital, but the Adler and Baeumer children, along with their parents, died in the same night as the Ermendrud parents.”

“That not suspicious to you?” Beau asks, and Caleb wants to kick her.

“Maybe?” Albert says with a tense sort of expression. “I wasn’t here when it happened though. Most of the older folks say it was just a kind of odd coincidence. I don’t really want to argue with them.”

That tracks, Caleb thinks. Small towns find conspiracy threatening. Their community is their life, and it’s much easier to believe a murder is an accident than confront the fact someone in their community is not so… _good_.

Beau looks down at the page, eyes skirting over the Zemnian to focus on the date. “820… when did the rumours of hauntings in the south fields start?”

“Oh, that?” Gosh, maybe… ten years ago? I cannot say for certain, but I can ask the Father for you?”

“No, it’s okay. Just… it wasn’t immediately afterwards?”

_“N-nein_… I am sure. Uh, are you people ghost hunters or something?” Albert looks nervously from Beau to Nott to Caleb, trying to gauge something unknown in their expressions. “I had figured you were going to go after what killed Hana Mündermann?”

“I dunno, maybe she was killed by a ghost,” says Beau with a grin, leaning forward on her staff a little. Albert goes a bit pale.

“D-does the mayor know you’re researching this?” He stammers.

“Why?” Beau drawls, getting closer than is probably comfortable. “You a snitch, little man?”

Albert shakes his head. “I—I have to go check on the Father. I will be back if you need more help later, otherwise feel free to peruse.”

He’s gone before Beau can say anything else, but she snickers as the door shuts behind him.

“That was a little rude,” Caleb comments.

“What, you complaining?”Beau says, twirling her staff as she approaches the center table. “Now we can talk about whatever.”

“I did not say it was a bad thing.”

Nott pokes her head out of Caleb’s coat, seeing that the coast is clear. “So, wait, what was that about you being presumed dead? They didn’t cover up for you?”

“Yeah,” Beau says. “Because it sounds like they covered up for Astrid and Eodwulf.”

“It certainly appears that way,” Caleb says, voice tight. “I suppose I was not worth the resources if I was not to be a… uh…”

He doesn’t really want to say it, but Nott and Beau nod, understanding what he means anyway.

Nott claps her hands, changing the subject with practiced swiftness. “Alright—give us the keywords we’re looking for and we’ll dig in, shall we?”

The three of them tear into the records—figuratively speaking—for what feels like days. It’s slow going, with Beau and Nott having to comb the dense Zemnian text for keywords rather than straight up reading them, but Caleb manages to get through a lot of them on his own.

Even if Beau and Nott had spoken the language it probably wouldn’t have helped much; after two hours of searching they come up with nothing—no magic users still living in Blumenthal.

“I guess I really was the last one,” Caleb mumbles, closing the births and deaths ledger for 40 years ago. They’d been cross referencing births with deaths and what few records of moves out of town they could find and had come up with none who were still alive or still in the area.

“This is bullshit!” Beau sighs, slamming her ledger—from 41 years ago—down on the table. “So what? They’re not from here? They scrubbed the records?”

Nott groans from where she’s sitting with Caleb on the floor. She had long since given up on the research, opting to letting her disguise run out and lie under a pile of discarded tomes.

“I don’t know,” Caleb says, rubbing his eyes. His head is swimming from all the new information. “Perhaps they are one step ahead of us… or maybe we have the wrong idea.”

“I don’t think so. This feels like the right track.”

The three of them stew for a bit, soaking up the foul mood in the room, before Caleb takes the initiative.

“This is going nowhere,” he says. “You two go tell Caduceus and Fjord, I’ll start tidying up.”

Beau give him an odd look, but then shrugs. “Okay weirdo, less work for me.”

She hops off the table and heads back out the door, but Nott stays behind for a moment.

“You okay, Caleb?” she asks, ever vigilant.

Caleb thumbs at the paper in his lap. “Yes, I… I just wanted to find something.”

Nott frowns. “Me too. But it’s not the end of the world. Maybe we’re just not looking in the right place…”

With that she turns and exits, leaving Caleb alone among the tomes and scrolls in the temple’s repository.

Normally he would feel at home in a place like this, but now not so much. Libraries and bookstores and record rooms had been his safe place for so many years, a place nothing could touch him – a place where he could learn freely without the expectation of payment.

Research so very rarely fails him, but when it does it’s like a law of physics failing—impossible and crushing and bewildering. Caleb no longer feels at home in this place of learning; he feels defeated.

There’s a knock at the door and Caleb sighs.

“I’m okay, Nott, I will clean up.”

“Uh, not Nott, sorry,” says a deep voice. Caleb snaps to attention.

His stomach turns to lead as he turns and sees the figure in the doorway, but he schools his expression and sits up straighter. “Yes, uh, sorry, Fjord. What is it?”

Fjord stands in the doorway looking as awkward as Caleb feels. He shifts his weight from foot to foot but manages to look Caleb in the eye—a feat Caleb himself is unable to reciprocate. “Caduceus sent me to help you.”

Caleb laughs humourlessly. “He wants you to talk to me.” It’s not a question.

“I guess,” Fjord says. “But, uh, I also wanted to talk to you.”

_This conversation isn’t over, _Fjord had said.

Caleb gets ready for Fjord to tear into him—to yell or scold or punch him like he probably deserves. But that never comes.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Fjord says awkwardly, uttering the very last thing Caleb had expected him to say. “Thanks for telling us your story.”

Caleb stares up at him, incredulous. “Why?”

“Why?” Fjord cocks an eyebrow.

Caleb balls his fists. “You—you all keep saying that… that you are thankful. Why? Why do you all enjoy knowing this about me?”

“Well,” Fjord begins, rocking back on his heels. “It helps me understand you, for one, and that’s something I want.”

Caleb is taken aback at that, and Fjord seems to take his lack of an answer as an invitation to continue.

“You said last night that I should understand, that… that we always have a choice,” he says softly. “And you were right that I managed to probably make the right one but… I know it’s not the same but I know what it’s like to be under the influence of something. To be tempted and pushed by something dark.”

Caleb looks down at his hands.

“And… and I know it’s not my place, but I know what it’s like to not be able to say goodbye.”

Caleb wonders, off-hand, if uncomfortable insight is something that comes hand in hand with being tethered to a god, if Fjord’s new sword is letting him peer into Caleb’s soul in the same manner it lets him see invisible things. He thinks he’s probably going to have to get used to this; being read like an open book by everyone around him. He supposes it’s only to be expected, having exposed so much of himself like he has.

Fjord takes a moment in which he appears to very obviously steel himself, and then he sits down on the floor next to Caleb.

“I never had parents, Caleb, so I don’t think I can exactly empathise with what you had.”

_Then why are you trying,_ says a nasty voice in the back of Caleb’s mind. It spills out a little, and he says, “What exactly would _that_ be, Fjord?”

“A childhood.”

_Oh._ Caleb shuts up.

“It wasn’t until I left the orphanage that I learned what having a father could feel like. I was twenty… maybe twenty-one when I met Vandren? I’d already been out on the streets for a few years by myself...”

Caleb doesn’t remember being twenty or twenty-one. He remembers being seventeen and he remembers being twenty-eight and everything in between is cold and foggy, like early spring rains without the reprieve. He remembers being achingly lonely.

Fjord keeps talking. “I was a shitty kid—a shitty man, really, but I didn’t act like it. I fell in with some bad crews, did some not so savoury work in Port Damali for some not so savoury people. And through it all I hated myself, I hated what my life was, and then I met Vandren.”

Fjord smiles to himself at that. It’s small and private but he lets Caleb see it, and Caleb recognises it from the fleeting moments he gives himself permission to think about his own father. Full of melancholy and fondness.

“Here was this _powerhouse_ of a man with a crew behind him that respected him and respected their work and… and they loved what they were doing and I just… I wanted that so _badly_.” Fjord’s eyes twinkle as he speaks. “He dragged me out of a dark place, even though I was a shithead to him at first. He gave me good, honest work, and more than that he… he taught me how to _live_ beyond surviving. He gave me the first real place I ever belonged.”

Caleb meets Fjord’s eyes for the first time that day.

_Leofric holds Bren’s hands steady in their positions on the crossbow, his tanned, calloused fingers enveloping his son’s pale ones with ease. _

_“Breathe, Bren,” he soothes. He breathes in, a deep inhale, allowing Bren to mirror him. Ein, zwei, drei… Bren exhales shakily, and while his hands still just a fraction, his mind does not._

_“I can’t do it,” he says, and his voice small, like him. He is eight and his father has taken him back into the fields behind their house to practice shooting with the smaller of his crossbows. He is eight, and he has not yet hit a single target. _

_Leofric removes his hands from the weapon and kneels next to his son. _

_“Are you scared?” He asks, and Bren opens his mouth to deny it, but his father raises a stilling hand. _

_“It is not shameful to be scared,” Leofric assures. “Do you know why I’m trying to teach you?”_

_Bren shrugs. _

_“I will be gone in the winter,” he says, and Bren almost misses the way he gazes out over the fields and back to their house, sadness brimming in his pale eyes. “Someone will need to hunt and trap while I’m gone. Your mother can’t do it all herself.”_

_“I know,” Bren admits. “It’s just…”_

_He runs his finger lamely over the point of the knocked arrow, feeling the sun-warmed steel on his skin. It is so sharp, so very sharp, and even though the weapon sits loosely in his hands he can feel the tension coiled within it. _

_“The bow is just a weapon, Bren. It’s a tool. It won’t hurt you unless you let it.”_

_Leofric smiles, warm and strong. Bren’s mother always tells him that he has the same smile as his father and Bren is glad for that._

_“But what if I hurt someone?” _

_“You won’t. Not if you learn to use it the right way.” Leofric reaches out and ruffles his son’s hair, making him giggle. “And that’s what I’m here for.”_

_Leofric helps him line up the shot again, aiming towards an empty mason jar they’ve balanced on top of a fencepost a few yards away. He lays his hands back over Bren’s, callouses rough and familiar. He guides the weapon gently, helping Bren lift it and peer down its sight. _

_“Okay, now just breathe… and let it go when you’re ready. It won’t go unless you let it, remember that.”_

_Bren breathes. He breathes slowly, steadily, and he lets it go._

_The jar shatters. _

_“Did you see that!?” Bren gasps after a moment of stunned silence, spinning around on his heel, sending the bow tumbling to the ground in his excitement. His father looks down at him with a mixture of genuine surprise and, more importantly to Bren, unbridled pride. _

_“I did,” he says with a grin, and then he wraps Bren up in a huge, sweeping hug and Bren’s whole world is briefly overcome by his father’s strong arms and soft work shirt and the thrum of his laughter in his chest and the smell of lupines._

_“That’s my boy,” his father says._

_And everything, for just that moment, is close to perfect. _

“I understand,” Caleb says softly. “The… the teaching… the giving… that is what a good father is.”

“Your dad was good to you?”

“The very best,” Caleb says hoarsely. He remembers _learning_ at his father’s side—learning how to shoot a bow and skin the rabbits he shot with it. He remembers learning how to garden and how to shave and how to darn his own socks. The hints of a smile play at the edge of his mouth.

Fjord smiles too.

“Vandren was good to me. But… but to say he was a father to me… I guess I can’t know for sure if that’s what he was,” he laughs dryly. “I don’t know much about what a father is in the first place… but… I think he might’ve been a good one. And he’s not dead… but he’s gone… I lost him.”

He nods to Caleb then, his golden eyes focused.

“You told me about your father once. You remember that?” Caleb nods and Fjord continues. “You said you try to live up to the man he was. I get that. I really do. I think I get that more than anyone here.”

Caleb thinks on Jester, who doesn’t know her father, and Beau, who seems to desperately wish she could forget hers, and he is inclined to agree with Fjord.

Fjord is still talking. “That’s what Vandren was to me—someone to live up to. If that’s what a father is then Vandren was a father to me. And I guess this is just a really roundabout way of saying that I understand what it’s like to lose that sort of person.”

Caleb looks down at his hands again, still gripping the edges of one of the ledgers. He fiddles awkwardly with the side of the rough parchment pages, not looking Fjord in the eye.

“I did not lose my father, Fjord,” he says weakly. “I murdered him.”

“Sure. Yeah. But you still _lost_ him. That’s not mutually exclusive.”

Fjord sighs.

“You’re allowed to miss them, Caleb.”

Caleb will not let himself cry here. He’s already cried in front of too many people, and though he cares about Fjord he does not want to expose himself to him like that. He wants to be strong.

“Why don’t you hate me?” He asks quietly.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Nott peek her head in the door and quickly duck it back out—always there to make sure he’s okay, another thing he doesn’t deserve—and he’s so caught up in the sight of her that he almost misses Fjord’s reply.

“Do you want us to?”

Caleb’s eyes widen, and he turns back to face Fjord. He’s looking at him with those warm golden eyes, the ones full of intelligence and more experience than the others in the group. He’s staring at him now, not accusatory – just curious.

“N-no, of course not.” His own answer surprises him a little.

“Then this is a you problem,” Fjord says simply. “You don’t like yourself, so you don’t want to let us like you. Well, hate to break it to you buddy, but you don’t get to decide that.”

It’s odd, Caleb thinks, that that sentiment keeps getting brought up. That he cannot bar their affection. He supposes it must be true, no matter how hard he tries. The Nein, despite everything, are all on the same page—they don’t want to hate him, they will not hate him, no matter how much he wants them too.

And he thinks, deep down, that he’s happy for that.

“We care about you, Caleb. You’re our friend. You were our friend before anything else and I’d like you to still be our friend. This… this situation, your situation, is messy. It’s not black and white. But what is black and white is that we don’t want to lose you. None of us.”

Caleb feels tears prick at his eyes and he bites them down desperately, his shoulders shuddering with the effort. Slowly, tentatively, Fjord reaches out and lays a large, strong hand on one of his shoulders.

That tips Caleb over the edge, and unbidden tears begin to trail down his cheeks.

His mind tumbles back to Jester’s words the night before, _“I can’t help you, Caleb”,_ she’d said. She couldn’t help him – not because she wasn’t able but because he wouldn’t let her.

_You don’t get to decide if they help or not, _comes a new voice that sounds like Fjord and Jester and Nott and Beau and Caduceus all at once.

Caleb sighs and tries to center himself. What a mess this is.

“You know,” Fjord says a little teasingly, “I didn’t know you could cry. Don’t think I’ve ever seen it.”

“Fuck, another one of my secrets is out then, _ja?”_ Caleb says, tears audible in his voice even as he laughs. “My fault for suggesting we come here, isn’t it?”

Fjord laughs too, and Caleb feels the ice in his chest begin to thaw.

“Thank you, Fjord.”

“Any time, Caleb.”

They fall into an easy silence, and Caleb folds the edges of the parchment in his hands over. While he does, Fjord nods to the ledgers littering the floor and tables.

“What are these?” Fjord asks conversationally, and for some reason it doesn’t feel as forced as it could have.

“Ledgers of births and deaths in the community,” Caleb answers.

Fjord absently opens one of them and flicks to the back. After a moment he says, “You get many foreigners here?”

“_Nein_,” Caleb says emphatically. “I told you this.”

“Then who the hell is Lilith Keres?”

The room goes so immediately silent that Caleb almost hears the exact moment his heart skips a beat.

“W-what?” he breathes.

Fjord doesn’t seem to notice the mood shift and continues talking. “It says right here. ‘Lilith Keres’… then, uh, some word I don’t know… then… someone called Braedyn Preslin?”

_“Fjord.”_

“…These don’t sound very Zemnian.”

“Fjord,” Caleb repeats, finally managing to catch the other man’s attention. “Give me the book.”

Fjord turns the ledger around and hands it over, open on a page near the back. Written out on the pages in the same neat hand as all the others are a series of names—death records of those who had died in Blumenthal in that year.

Most of the notes after the names of the dead had detailed ordinary things—the kind of deaths Caleb had been privy to in the community even as a child; the pox, work accidents, old age, and the cold grasp of winter that claimed so many…

But this record of _slaughter_ is unfamiliar, as foreign to Caleb’s soft memories of Blumenthal as his own name—as foreign as the names on the pages.

_Lilith Keres, presumed eleven heritage, age unknown, next of kin unknown. Found in south woods by Ermendrud property. Cause of death unknown, presumed animal attack. _

_UNKNOWN MALE, presumed dwarven, age unknown, next of kin unknown. Found in river upstream from Ermendrud property. Cause of death unknown, presumed animal attack. _

_Braedyn Preslin, presumed human, age unknown, next of kin unknown. Found in river downstream of Ermendrud property. Cause of death unknown, presumed animal attack._

It was the same pattern all the way down the page. Elves, dwarves, even a tiefling… All with either foreign names or no name at all. Causes of death so violent their ages, races, and identifying features could only be _presumed_. The only constants being their status as outsiders and the location of their discovery.

His house. His fucking_ house. _

Caleb’s eyes tear across the page. The named dead are few and far between, likely the only ones where travel documents or other identifying papers survived whatever had killed them. The rest?

The rest…

_Unbekannt. _

Unknown. Over and over and over. Six dead outsiders in the winter of 827 and, as Caleb flicks back to the previous months, five more in the summer and eight in the spring, only a handful of them named.

He grabs another ledger from the pile at random. 828. Even more foreign names jump out at him from the page—even more unknown victims. He stares at the pile and wonders how many he’d find if he tore through them all.

_Maybe we’re just not looking in the right place,_ Nott had said.

“They’re not from the village,” he murmurs.

Fjord looks nervous but not surprised. “Then who are they?” he asks.

“F-foreigners… travellers, I think, like us.” That part of the thought makes Caleb almost hysterical. He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “People pa-passing through the valley…”

“I thought they said they didn’t get many outsiders in Blumenthal.”

“I mean… we got a few every so often…”

“Doesn’t look like you do anymore,” Fjord says dryly. “Looks like they’re all fucking dying before they make it to the town.”

Caleb shuts the ledgers. “Whatever this is… its prey isn’t random. It's targeting outsiders.”

Fjord’s eyes widen. “Which means it’s either sentient—”

“Which it is not,” Caleb says, suppressing a shiver. “I saw it up close. It is as feral as anything.”

“Okay,” Fjord says with a nod. “So that means someone is probably telling it what to go after…”

“And if it’s the same person who is hiding something in my—my parent’s house… then this could have been going on for a decade.”

Fjord bites his lip and leans back, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Holy shit.”

_“Ja._ Holy shit.”

“We need to—”

They are interrupted by a voice from the front of the temple, echoing through the halls.

“Guys?! Are you in here?!”

It’s Jester.

“That’s good timing,” Fjord says, smile sneaking onto his face at the sound of her voice. “Let’s go.”

Caleb gathers up as many of the recent records as he can and follows Fjord as the two of them tear out of the repository. His mind roils with the new information and potential connections—some too awful to consider.

He doesn’t want them to be right. He doesn’t want to deaths at the hands of this creature to be the will of whoever is fucking around with the image of his mother. Because if that’s true then the worst is true.

Because if that’s true… then there is a murderer in Blumenthal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fjord and Caleb?? DID SOMEONE ORDER FJORD AND CALEB???
> 
> God here’s hoping no one I know irl finds this because I deadass am naming almost every Zemnian NPC after a real goddamn person I know and I do not want to be held accountable for that. 
> 
> Some mechanics notes: 1. Caleb actually has a canon proficiency in light crossbows that he has never once used! Proficiencies are fun to play with so I decided to work it into his flashback. 2. The Mellora and Erathis connection was a happy accident! I didn’t have the Nein going to temple in my outline until I’d written the first two chapters and established it as an Erathis haus, so it worked out well in the end to build another positive social connection in the town. *absolute madman Matt Mercer voice* what if god was………a lesbiam? A… lesbean? A……...wlw??
> 
> Stay frosty folks!


	7. child of war, oh, lend a mending hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Wayward winds, a voice that sings  
Of a forgotten land.  
See it fall, child of war  
Oh, lend a mending hand._
> 
> — “Wolf”, First Aid Kit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey team! How’s the complete and utter death of human civilization treating us? 
> 
> It’s been a hot minute! The last few months have been filled with harrowing international travel, plague, a surprise return to school, my computer exploding, revolution, and a LOT of other projects. Thanks for sticking with ‘er though!
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to Izzy and Mollie, who fueled its completion from the opposite side of the country.

The first thing Jester hears upon reaching the temple of Erathis is soft, light laughter from within.

It makes her take pause; it’s different from the mood of the day—different from the mood of the whole _week_, if she’s being honest.

The door is already slightly ajar so, juggling Martha Mündermann’s basket of baked goods under one arm, Jester pushes her way into the temple’s warm interior.

The inside of the temple is dimly lit but cozy, with tapestries of dull colour but rich design hanging from the stone walls that Jester can’t help but want to paint. There are plenty of pews and shelves and columns ripe for graffiti, too, which makes her smile despite everything.

“Hey Jess!”

Jester’s grin widens at the sound of Beau’s voice, an instant and soothing balm to the worries of the day.

She spots her a moment later, sitting up at the front of the temple in a set of nice, if humble, wooden pews. She and Caduceus look to have been in conversation with two men, but as soon as Jester enters Beau is on her feet, smile on her face as she waves Jester over.

“Hi Beau!” She greets, zipping forward through the pews.

“You okay?” Beau asks. Jester nods without giving the query much thought.

“Yep!” she says, brandishing the basket of baked goods in front of her. “Look what Liesel’s mom gave us!”

“That’s nice of her,” Caduceus says. “Those will be lovely with tea.”

“If you wish to prepare some tea, I am happy to show you to some facilities,” says the older of the two men, drawing Jester’s attention to him for the first time.

Her initial instinct is that he looks incredibly jovial. He’s human and quite old, with rosy cheeks and white hair and a big smile. He nods to Jester as she sits down next to Beau.

Caduceus beams and taps his staff. “Thank you, Father, but I always come prepared.”

He turns to Jester.

“Jester. This is Father Alphonse,” Caduceus explains, gesturing to the older man. “He and Brother Albert are priests of the Lawbearer.”

He holds out a hand at the younger of the two men, a half-elf that looks about the same age as Caleb or Fjord. He also nods at Jester.

“You must be the other cleric we’ve heard so much about,” Father Alphonse says warmly, bowing fully in his seat.

“I’m Jester,” Jester says. “It’s nice to meet you!”

“The pleasure is all ours. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen travellers like you in Blumenthal.”

“Like interesting ones?” Beau asks. Jester giggles.

“Like _any_ ones,” Albert says glumly. “The only visitors we have had in a long time have been the occasional travelling merchants. I have not met adventurers like you folk since I lived closer to the capital.”

No visitors at all? Jester thinks that’s kind of odd. She’d been sure Caleb had mentioned seeing at least _some_ travellers in his youth…

“How long is a long time?” Beau asks, obviously thinking the same thing as Jester.”

Albert blanches and looks to Alphonse for help. The old man steps in gracefully.

“Such changes do not happen overnight,” he says. “But I would reason our dip in outsiders began over a decade ago. Perhaps fifteen years ago?”

Beau leans back.

“So, right around the time of those mysterious deaths we keep hearing about?” She asks coolly. Jester makes a flicker of eye contact with Caduceus, who just raises an eyebrow back.

Albert looks incredibly taken aback and starts to splutter, but Alphonse remains calm. He smiles, but it’s not malicious.

It is, instead, almost… _proud_.

“What an observation,” he says softly, eyes locked on Beau. “It smacks of conspiracy when you say it like that, no? You are quite an interesting woman.”

Beau smirks. “What can I say? I like mysteries.”

“You and your companions all,” he agrees. “Our record rooms have not seen so much traffic in quite some time.”

“Well, Caleb is quite a reader.”

_Oh shit,_ Jester thinks, _Caleb is here!_

_I have a book for him! _

_I probably should have mentioned that sooner!_

“Where is Caleb?” Jester asks, swivelling around to peer through the temple, as if he’d be hiding under the altar or behind a column.

“He and Fjord are in the records room through that door,” Caduceus supplies, nodding towards the offending passageway. “I think Nott is with them.”

“I have something for him,” Jester says, and she pulls the cloth covering back a bit to reveal the book in the basket.

“That looks… interesting,” Beau says eyes skirting the Zemnian on the title. “What is it?”

“A book of fables and things. Hans told me to give it to Caleb… actually—” she cups her hand around her mouth, “—Guys?! Are you in here?!”

Beau covers her ears and laughs as Jester’s shout echoes around the vaulted ceiling of the temple. Jester grins.

A few moments later, Caleb and Fjord duck their heads out of the doorway, and Jester sees the vague rustle of Caleb’s coat that indicates Nott is also with them.

“Hey, Jess,” Fjord greets with a smile. “How’d it go?”

“It was nice,” Jester says, waving the question away again. “I brought presents!”

The duo—or rather, well disguised trio—move closer. Fjord peers at the basket as she holds it out to them. “Are those pastries?”

“Yes! Liesel’s mom made them for us.”

“Oh, it’s strudel,” Caleb says softly, lifting the cloth covering. “I like strudel.”

Jester gets a good look at him as he leans in, and it becomes immediately apparent that he looks much healthier than he had when she’d left them this morning. She knows instantly that Caduceus must have cast a restorative, and she silently thanks him. While Caleb’s eyes are still shadowed by fatigue, the sickly grey tinge to his skin has once more been replaced by a touch of healthy colour in his cheeks. It lifts a small weight off Jester’s shoulders.

“You can have some if you want,” she assures him. “They’re for all of us.”

He lifts the covering more and frowns.

“Jester, what is this?”

He reaches into the basket and pulls the book out, dusting a few crumbs off it.

Oh, she keeps forgetting. “That’s for you!” she chirps. “It’s from Hans, he said it might help but I can’t read it.”

At the sight of reading material Caleb looks marginally less uncomfortable. He takes the tome gratefully, opening to the first page with a delicate touch Jester knows he only reserves for books.

Before he gets too stuck into it, Caleb reaches back and absently puts a hand on Fjord’s elbow, shooting him a glance. Fjord’s eyes go wide as some kind of realisation passes over his face.

It’s a level of comfortability Jester hadn’t expected from the pair, considering how standoffish Fjord had been before.

Maybe they talked? She hopes so.

“Actually, Caleb and I found some stuff that could be helpful, too,” Fjord says, keeping a subtle eye on Alphonse and Albert, who have begun to attend to something at the altar. “But we’ll have to show you.”

Fjord and Caleb lead them into the back of the temple. The records room they enter looks used, with tomes and scrolls littered in organised piles around the floor and on the table in the centre. Caleb, nose still in the book, takes a seat at one end of the table, and Fjord waves the rest of the party over to the other chairs.

As Caduceus begins to prepare tea, Fjord catches everyone up.

He tells the pieced together story he and Caleb had hastily formed while the sun sinks lower and lower, and in the fading light the earlier friendly air of the temple’s interior turns dour. Or maybe its just because of the awful truths Fjord is delivering.

It’s been quite a day for awful truths, hasn’t it?

Dozens dead. Torn apart at the seams over the years like Hana had been. Caleb reads his book and Fjord tells their tale. Jester clutches the basket closer.

Suddenly, the pastries don’t look so appetizing.

“I just find it very strange that something like this could be going on and people wouldn’t notice,” Caduceus says.

Nott hums thoughtfully. “This is a small town. The outside world can tend to go a little bit unnoticed. These people were probably just travellers from the south… maybe mercenaries… it’s easier to ignore that than someone from home.”

“We came from the south,” Jester notes. “How come we didn’t get attacked by the thingy before last night?”

“It may be because we teleported in,” Caleb admits, looking up from the book for just a moment. “I didn’t want to approach where we could be seen, so I told Essek to go into the south eastern woods specifically.”

“Okay, so, how did that change things?” Fjord asks.

Caleb averts his eyes. “The road past my old house is the most direct way into town, I would bet all these people took that road coming from directly south or south-west. It’s more visible, so it would hypothetically give people in town time to spread word of visitors if they come that way.”

“And time for them to be attacked by the creature... if it’s being controlled by one of those people,” Beau finishes the thought, puffing the words through a bite of one of the pastries.

“A barghest,” Caleb says, setting the book down. Everyone falls silent.

“A what-guest?” Fjord asks.

“Barghest,” Caleb corrects.

“That’s what Hans said,” Jester says. “Do you think so too?”

Caleb nods solemnly, tapping the open page. “After reading this? I have no doubt.”

“What’s a barghest?” Nott asks.

“They’re creatures of lore,” Caleb replies. “I’ve heard of them, of course, but I assumed they weren’t real—like unicorns.”

Jester pouts. “Hey! Unicorns are real!”

“Sure. Anyway, they’re a type of creature called a black dog. Most people would call such beasts demons, but it’s more likely they’re from the Feywild.”

That piques Jester’s interest a little. She leans over to see what Caleb is looking at, and he almost subconsciously points out the sections to her as he explains then—even though they both know it’s incomprehensible to anyone but him. Well… almost incomprehensible. Jester is pleased to see she can spy a few words she understands.

_Metall. Wasser. Hund. Tod. _

“They are harmed by pure metals,” Caleb explains, “and cannot cross running water, among other things. Barghests are creatures of the crossroads. Beings of boundaries that exist between life and death, reality and illusion, here and there—they draw strength from shadow and uncertainty.”

_That tracks,_ Jester thinks. The barghest had seemed to slip in and out of the shadows the night before. It has been so hard to see, even with her darkvision.

“So… metal and light would help us fight it?” Beau reasons, cutting through Caleb’s flowery explanation with practiced ease. She reaches for another pastry.

“A fair assumption.”

“Or getting it in running water?” Nott asks, looking worried. Jester reaches under the table and subtly takes the goblin’s hand in hers.

Caleb shrugs. “Maybe. I cannot say for sure. This book is… heavily influenced by hearsay—oral tradition can be a bit finicky with details.”

“This is all great,” Fjord says dryly. “But it doesn’t explain _why_ the thing is here.”

Caleb actually looks uncomfortable at that. Oddly uncomfortable. Jester meets his eye and raises a questioning eyebrow.

He sighs. “Barghests… according to this book… are drawn to sites of execution.”

To say a pall falls over the room would be an understatement.

_Oh,_ thinks Jester, _it was a kind of execution,_ _wasn’t_ _it_?

Beau is the first to break the silence. “O-okay so let’s assume it was drawn here by… what happened. It’s been eating sheep and people? Only travellers though, not the locals.”

“Until now,” Caduceus corrects gently.

“Until now, yeah.” Beau puts her hands up, sending crumbs flying. “Let’s just… let’s summarise, okay? Get everything together.”

She starts counting points off on her fingers.

“So, there’s a big fuck-off dog that’s been killing travellers in the south woods for the last ten or so years. No one has seemed to kick up a fuss about it until now, presumably because the person it killed was a local, not an outsider.”

One finger down.

“The fact its choice of prey is so specific implies either some level of sentience or someone or something is controlling or influencing it.” Another finger down.

“Fair assumption,” Caduceus says.

Beau nods at him before continuing. “The person influencing it might be the same person casting illusion magic at the house, which we’re thinking is to hide and guard something in the root cellar.” A third finger down.

“It had to have been someone familiar enough with Caleb’s mother to recreate her image,” Fjord adds. “Which points to someone from the village.”

“I just—” Caleb bites his lip. “I cannot think of who it would _be_. People in this town don’t do magic at that level. I had to _leave_ to get any sort of formal training.”

“Do you think it could be the Scourgers, then?” Jester asks.

It had been weighing on her and, if the others’ expressions were anything to go by, it had been weighing on them too.

“The paranoid part of me wants to say yes…but…” Caleb glances up, meeting Beau’s eye, and she nods.

“Probably not,” she says, picking up exactly where he left off. “With the war on I’d wager the king has more important things to do than send his fuckin’ personal assassins to a podunk town in the middle of nowhere—no offence, Caleb.”

He continues as if he hadn’t heard her. “This?” He waves he hand in a vague, short gesture that signifies not much of anything. “This isn’t the vollstrecker way. It is, uh, not their style to prolong such things.”

“So, it must be a magic user in the area who isn’t public with their abilities.” Beau says. “They musn’t have any formal training, either, or that would be in here somewhere?”

Caleb nods. “We have to assume. If they were born with abilities, it would be here too.”

“Okay, so _weird_ magic user,” Beau confirms, putting down another finger. “But that… doesn’t narrow it down. If anything, it makes it even _harder_. If it had been a cleric or a wizard or something it might’ve been written down. But if it’s some whack shit like Fjord—sorry—then we’re back to square one.”

There’s a knock on the door. They all turn as it opens.

Alphonse pokes his head in.

“Sorry to intrude but it appears our dear lady mayor is here to see you all,” he says wryly. “She is out front.”

_Fuck. _

Müller is standing on the threshold of the temple. She’s wearing fine woollen robes dyed a pale grey, and her hair is tied back in a modest up-do. Jester is mad before she even sets eyes on her.

“Good evening,” Müller greets, not sounding at all like she cares about the quality of their evening. “I hope your day has been… productive.”

Her gaze flickers over Jester momentarily. Jester clenches her fists.

“_Super_ productive,” says Beau. Müller narrows her eyes.

“They have not bothered you, Alphonse?” She asks the priest, who is standing a little to the side of their group.

Alphonse smiles pleasantly. “No, Lady Müller. They have been very amicable guests.”

“That is good to hear.” She turns her attention back to the Nein. “I told you yesterday I would strive to update you on the progress of the investigation. I can only apologise I could not deliver the news sooner, but we have been quite busy.”

“That’s fine, Lady Müller,” Fjord cuts in before Beau can say something else. “We appreciate any updates you have for us.”

Müller nods. “Our investigation at the abandoned property has revealed signs of an animal attack, or at least animal presence. We believe it may be enough to confirm the presence of a wolf.”

“Great,” Beau drawls. “So, are we free to go?”

“Not quite, I’d actually like to ask you one last favour.”

Jester’s knuckles go white. Calm down, she thinks, calm down.

“Nightfall is almost upon us,” Müller continues. “I have called a town meeting of sorts, where I will update the citizens on our progress in the investigation. I would appreciate it if Beauregard and Herr Widogast would attend and perhaps speak.”

Beau scoffs and folds her arms over her chest. “Why? Cause we’re the only humans?”

“You are free to think that,” Müller says in a thin voice. “However, _I_ would say it’s because you are the only member of this group resembling a person of authority, Beauregard, and likewise Herr Widogast is the only one of your merry band that speaks a lick of Zemnian without magical assistance.”

Beau’s jaw snaps shut.

Müller turns to address the whole group. “The rest of you will be asked to remain in the Fair Lady, of course.”

“Of course,” says Fjord. His demeanour is outwardly pleasant, but the rest of the party can feel his annoyance in every minute twitch of his calm expression.

Müller doesn’t notice. She nods to Beau and Caleb. “I will see you at the town hall at sundown. Please… tidy yourselves up before then.”

With a turn of her heel and a snap of her cloak, she’s gone, walking with her head held high back down the road.

Jester waits until she’s out of earshot to say, “What a bitch.”

“What’s the plan now?” Nott whines, gnawing on her lip nervously.

“Same plan, just gonna improvise a bit,” Beau says. “Caleb and I go to this stupid meeting and keep her distracted, and you four go kill the barghest.”

“Kill it?!” Nott squawks before being shushed. “Just us!?”

“We know how to do it now,” Beau reasons. “It’ll be easy.”

Nott’s expression turns sour. “You and I have _very_ different definitions of easy.”

Back at the inn, Beau and Caleb reluctantly clean themselves up for the meeting.

With Beau having absolutely no respect for authority or procedure, and Caleb still shaking the habits learned from spending half a decade sleeping in alleys, there isn’t a lot to work with. Jester finds her work cut out for her, forcing the two of them to bathe and rushing their clothes off to be mended and cleaned while they’re distracted. She talks Beau into letting her do her hair, but can’t manage to convince her to let her do her makeup.

“I love you, Jester,” Beau says in a grave tone. “But you are _not_ coming near me with blush.”

Caleb is much more resistant to everything.

“No one has recognised me yet, but I do not want to take that risk.”

Nott tuts. “So you’re going to wear your hair in your face all night? You look messy.”

“If that is what it takes, then yes!”

Jester swings her legs over the end of the bed and takes a bite of a pastry, watching the argument between Nott and Caleb unfold like a particularly interesting tennis match.

“Why am I hearing shouting?” Fjord asks, ducking his head in the door. Jester can hear Beau shouting from down the hall. “What’s the issue?”

Nott spins around with her hands on her hips, big eyes full of pity. “Caleb thinks people are going to recognise him at the meeting.”

“They might!” Caleb protests.

“You were fifteen last time anyone saw you!”

“Yes! But now I am the same age as m-my—my…”

His sentence peters out, like wind dropping from the sails of a ship suddenly, casting it adrift. He snaps his mouth shut.

“You think you look too much like your dad?” Nott wagers.

Caleb looks staggered, and his lips press into a thin line. Hit the nail on the head. “I… I don’t…”

What he’s about to say clicks in Jester’s head instantly, and she quickly decides she doesn’t want him to have to admit it here, now. So, she steps in.

“Let us do your hair, Caleb,” Jester interrupts, drawing all eyes to her. “I’m pretty good at disguises, maybe after I can do some makeup stuff after.”

Caleb frowns and Fjord laughs.

“Oh, _that_ I’d like to see.”

Jester raises an eyebrow at Caleb, and watches resignation flash in his eyes.

“Okay,” he sighs, “But no pink.”

Nott and Fjord, with a level of teamwork rarely seen, manage to get Caleb to do his hair. Nott plonks him in an uncomfortable chair while Fjord stands guard at the door and Jester sits at the window, and with deft, tricky fingers, she weaves his auburn locks back into a braid. 

Jester doesn’t end up doing Caleb’s makeup. He goes white as a sheet when she pulls out the kit, with its forty shades of foundation alone, and adamantly refuses to let her near him with it.

Jester stays with him anyway. The others re-join Caduceus and Beau to make last minute preparations. Caleb sits cross-legged on the floor and Jester sits across from him, holding his spellbook open as he traces the lines of Find Familiar into the floor with chalk, turning Frumpkin into a bird so he could be sent back and forth.

“Before, when you were talking about your dad…”

Caleb averts his eyes.

“You don’t remember what he looked like, do you?” Jester asks softly. There’s a long pause.

“No,” he says in a quiet voice. “I… I don’t remember. Not really. I remember my mother better.”

It’s so very sad, Jester thinks, even sadder when she’s looking at him from this distance, seeing every twitch of his expression that betrays his hurt.

“If you don’t remember, why do you think the others will?”

“People have good memories in small towns,” he says. “I suppose I am just worried because I don’t know what parts of me would be giveaways. If I did, I would know what to hide, but I don’t, so I’m… worried, with nowhere for that worry to go.”

He starts tearing up incense and tossing it into the brazier.

“What _do_ you remember about him?” Jester asks.

“He was… blond.”

“Okay, _that’s_ pretty different from you!” Jester giggles. “I’d say you look more like your momma, from what we saw.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Hmm… perhaps. My father had a beard, though. Blue eyes,” he continues. “Similar to me. He… he had very strong hands, h-he… worked a lot, so he had calloused fingers and he kept his nails very short. They were freckled very darkly. Not like mine.”

He smiles up at her. It’s not happy.

“I remember his hands more than his face. Isn’t that awful?”

Jester thinks about Molly. She tries to summon his face in the way she thinks Caleb is trying to summon his father’s. She tries to see his red eyes and his curly, berry-coloured hair and his sharp teeth.

But what side had that tattoo been on?... Were both ears pierced or just the one? Was his tail sharp? Or curled a little like hers? She couldn’t quite recall.

“We don’t get to choose what we remember about people.”

“No,” he agrees.

“Besides that… Are you alright?” she asks. “Like with Müller and the barghest and everything?”

“I am… fine, Jester,” he sighs. “I just… I suppose I’m just angry, more than anything.”

“I am too,” she admits. “I don’t really know what to do about it.”

“Do you want some advice? From someone who is angry a lot?”

Jester laughs. “You’re not angry _Cay-leb_,” she says, leaning hard into his sing-song name. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you get mad. You’re just… sad all of the time.”

It’s his turn to laugh.

“I appreciate it, Jester,” he says with a small smile. “But I’m actually angry all the time, you know, I just hide it really well.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Jester hums thoughtfully. “Okay then, what’s your advice, _Mr. Angry-Wizard_?”

“I would advise you to do something with it. Making anger productive is the best way to use it. If you don’t, you just let it bottle up, and that is no good for anyone.”

Caleb reaches up to run fingers through his nicely done hair, which Jester promptly smacks down. He chuckles.

“That’s good advice,” Jester says.

“I don’t always follow it myself,” he admits. “But I think it’s good, too.”

Jester nods, and he shoots her a smile before straightening up in shock.

“Oh!” He says, and in an instant, he’s walking over to where his coat and bag are slung over a chair. He starts rummaging through the bag before turning back around.

“I want you to take this,” he says.

From the depths of his bag Caleb retrieves, of all things, his driftglobe. He presses the sizeable orb, swirling with soft arcane energy, into Jester’s hands with a surprising wariness.

“The barghest is hard to see. Perhaps this will help.”

“Oh! Thank you, Caleb!”

“Look after it,” he says, and then he adds. “And yourself. Look after yourself.”

Jester laughs.

“You too.”

She leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek. His skin is scratchy with stubble in that soft sort of way, and she can feel the heat of a growing blush before she even pulls back. His eyes flick away from hers and she smiles.

“It’s going to be okay,” she assures softly. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

He chuckles. “I am more worried about what might happen to _you_. If this gets out of hand, perhaps it would be safer for you to go ahead without me.”

Jester rolls her eyes. “Well, first of all, I owe it to Liesel to find out what killed her sister. Second of all—” she clasps his hand in hers “—We’re your family, Caleb, and that means we aren’t going to leave you behind.”

“Thank you,” he replies.

He walks away with a smile, leaving Jester to her thoughts, the driftglobe heavy in her hands.

The walk to Caleb’s old house is significantly shorter the second time around.

It has the benefit of not being as late in the day as the last time, but anticipation stains the stroll with an uncomfortable air.

“I hope they’ll be okay,” Nott says nervously, trotting along at Jester’s heels. She’s casting periodic glances back at the receding town, as if waiting for a horrible cry or explosion as an excuse to tear her way back to Caleb’s side.

“They’ll be fine,” Jester says, as much for her own benefit as Nott’s. “It’s just a meeting, and they’re both super smart!”

“That’s not exactly what I’m worried about,” Nott mumbles, but she doesn’t elaborate. Instead, she says, “I’m gonna go scout ahead.”

“Is that a good idea?” Fjord asks. Nott rolls her eyes.

“I’ll yell if I get in trouble. Don’t worry.”

With that she darts off through the fields, making a beeline for the distant copse of trees that mark the road to Caleb’s house. Jester finds herself unable to look away, watching Nott’s receding form until she can no longer see her through the tall grasses.

Fjord sighs.

“Do you guys get the feeling there’s more to this we’re not seeing?”

“Oh, I feel like that most of the time,” Caduceus says. “But I think that’s usually just me.”

“Well, I’m feeling it now,” Fjord mutters. “I don’t know if it was very smart to split up.”

“This might be our only chance to do this,” Jester counters, and she can tell that her serious tone raises a few eyebrows. “The whole town is at that meeting, so whoever is doing this will be there too.”

“That’s if we’re right about them being a local…” Fjord sighs. “I’m just nervous.”

Jester is nervous too, but she keeps that to herself.

“Don’t worry, Fjord!” She chirps, giving him a good punch in the arm. “It’s gonna take more than a little puppy to knock us down!”

His resulting smile makes it all worth it, she thinks.

They reach the house just as the sun has finished setting, and the eerie, animal-less silence of the Ermendrud house is pierced the second they walk in the gate by the ghostly shouts of Caleb’s not-mother.

The trio book it into the house, weapons in hand, but find their readiness wasted.

“Sorry!” Nott squawks, crouched on the floor by the trapdoor. “I’m just trying to disable the spell on the door.”

Her nimble fingers dart over the lock, popping it open with only a small amount of effort, and swinging it open. The ghostly woman flickers but doesn’t disappear. Nott sighs.

“Shit,” she hisses under her breath.

“Allow me,” Caduceus says mildly, and he waves his hand. Jester sees the motions of a dispel dance through his fingers, and in an instant the ghost of Caleb’s mother is no more.

The group let out a collective held breath.

“That’s one problem solved,” Fjord says dryly. “Now we just need our…”

“Beastie?” Nott offers. Fjord smirks weakly.

“Sure.”

They stand stock still in the hollowed-out kitchen, no light illuminating the scene except the moon above them, spilling in through the caved in ceiling. Outside, all is silent save for the rustling of the wildflowers and grasses.

Jester narrows her eyes at the back garden. Is that—

“Follow me,” she says quietly, and walks out the back door into the yard.

Moonlight spills across a field of overgrown lupines and mountain mallow. It comes up to Jester’s waist, a swishing grass sea, rippling and flowing.

She’d had the thought, earlier, that it was too quiet in the north—that this far from the ocean there wasn’t any noise at night to keep you company. But she wonders if this had been Caleb’s ocean. If he had looked out over his field of lupines at night the way Jester had looked out over her harbour. If he had counted field mice and robins like she counted ships and gulls, both listening to the same soft hushing sounds outside their window.

Jester runs her hands absently through the grasses as she walks to what had caught her attention, the soft-petaled flowers bumping against her palms.

It was calm, but she knew it wouldn’t last.

There!

What she had seen from the house, a chance glance aided by no small amount of luck. A clump of fur, snatched by one of the waving, pallid lupines.

She plucks it off the blossom and twists it in her fingers.

When she turns to show it to the group, Caduceus takes it from her fingers. “It’s still warm,” he says.

A chill goes through the group.

There’s no squeaky gate to save them this time. They’re standing in the middle of a moonlit clearing, wildflowers bobbing in the wind, the dark treeline like high walls on all sides.

What alerts Jester is a small thing. In the south, the nights are never quiet. The sea churns its soft hushing song, and silence stands out like blood on silk sheets. Here, where silence is king, broken only by the soft swishing of grass, so much like a distant ocean—loud noise stands out in much the same way.

To her left, Jester hears the hushing song of the ocean where it should not be—she hears something _moving_ in the grass.

The barghest steps out of the darkened treeline, though the darkness seems to come with it, clinging to its fur like a heavy cloak. It snarls. Spittle, glimmering in the low light, flies from its gnarled lips as it stalks through the grass.

“Jester, now!” Someone shouts.

Jester throws the driftglobe into the air, incanting the word Caleb had taught her as she does. In an instant the clearing is filled with blistering daylight, spilling over every surface and driving the shadows away.

Under the blinding illumination of an echoed sun, Jester looks at the barghest’s true form for the first time.

With the shadows driven back from its body the barghest’s bulk is almost entirely gone. In place of thick fur and muscle stands a rail-thin beast, scrawny and sick and haggard. Just as tall as before, but unsteady and frail. Its ribs protrude from behind matted, brittle fur and its mouth and eyes ooze with sores and sickly liquid. And its eyes, _oh_ its eyes—

Like hellfire incarnate, red, festering eyes turn to the gathered party. The beast snarls, a lack of shadow doing nothing to reduce the ferocity of the noise.

And it leaps. Right at Jester.

Even though its shadowy strength has left it, the barghest is still a huge fucking dog. The next thing Jester knows she’s on her back in the dirt, claws digging painfully into the flesh of her left shoulder.

She cries out, but the pain lessens almost immediately. The barghest is thrown off her with two bolts of eldritch energy.

In an instant Jester clambers to her feet, tights slick with mud and dirt. She grips her holy symbol and summons the biggest lollipop she can, gleaming in the dimness like fireworks and coloured flame. She grips it by the handle and swings, and as it tears through the air it leaves behind a streaking afterimage, flaring behind her eyelids. She tastes burning sugar on her tongue.

The spiritual weapon slams into the barghest’s haunch and, unlike the night before, the blistering daylight cast from the driftglobe lets the glowing bludgeon tear through fur and skin like crêpe paper.

Black blood bursts from the wound and Jester takes a step back as the barghest cries out. It lashes at her, claws raking her side—blood oozes from the cuts before Jester feels the warm touch of Caduceus’s healing.

She hops backwards, leaving the lollipop by the barghest’s side to continue to pummel its sickly frame.

The four of them surround the barghest on three sides and, through beatings and quick dodges, shepherd the hulking thing through the woods towards the river.

_Running water. Get it in the running water._

They fling spells and fire arrows and take slashes at its bleeding body.

Fjord runs forward, slicing upwards with his sword to knock the barghest off balance. It teeters and tumbles, rolling backwards into the gully, and landing with a strangled, mournful howl in the cold, rushing water of the river.

The four of them take a moment to breathe. They listen to the beast’s tortured cries until they ease.

It staggers out of the river, trembling and drenched. Its wounds foam and fester under the freshwater, but that’s not enough.

The broken thing drops to its haunches and Jester stalks forward, pushing past her allies with single-minded focus. She slides down the bank until she’s right next to the dying barghest.

For just an instant the scene in front of her shifts. For just an instant, the writhing, twitching monster on the riverbank is not what Jester sees.

She sees Liesel, on her knees, clutching the body of her little sister, mutilated beyond recognition.

She sees Yasha, eyes filled with a monstrous something, turned against them—against her.

She sees things she’s never seen before.

She sees Molly, broken on a roadside, everything taken from him in an instant. Blood-stained snow and a shallow grave.

She sees Veth Brenatto, dragged by her hair to a river by chittering, cackling creatures driven by rage. Erased against her will.

She sees a young man with eyes like the sky, crouched in front of a farmhouse, screaming the names of his mother and father to towering flames that hold no answer. Blood on his arms, his hands, his tongue.

She sees everything she cannot fix.

The world is so very cruel, Jester thinks as she approaches the barghest. She’s supposed to be a healer, a combatant against all the awful things of the world. But she can’t be everywhere. She can’t heal everything.

And that’s where she’s been wrong all along.

Jester has never been a very good fixer, as much as she wants to be one. She wants to fix her friends and fix her parents and fix herself, but it doesn’t come naturally. She’d been so glad when Caduceus had joined them, because Caduceus is a _good_ fixer. Caduceus seems to see problems and know exactly what to do with them. Jester more often than not sees problems and asks who she has to hurt before she even _considers_ what she might have to change.

Because there’s a fighter inside Jester Lavorre.

So, it’s all she can do, in the end; Get rid of this creature. Kill it. Drive her hands into its open wounds and send freezing, festering death into its veins.

But that’s _good_.

It’s one less thing to worry about. One less thing to hurt people. One less thing to _break_ them.

She understands now. It’s a different kind of healing, she supposes, to destroy something before it even has a chance to destroy something else. Pre-emptive. Unforgiving. Final.

She cannot fix broken hearts but she can make it so they never break again. She can take the fighter within her and turn it outwards, latch it onto the things that threaten her family and tear them to pieces.

Jester lets Inflict Wounds flow into the fetid skin of the barghest. The creature howls, a tortured, painful cry that rips through the dusk.

She feels its death throes under her palms, and it’s only then that she pulls away, stumbling back and falling to her knees.

The barghest wheezes one final breath and lays still.

Jester, not so still, lays on her back in the dirt, staring up at the cloudless evening sky above her and panting like she’s trying to inhale all the air in the sky.

“I did it,” she whispers.

She clenches her fist around her holy symbol and sighs up at the stars.

“I did it.”

They regroup in the husk of the kitchen, where Caduceus and Jester take turns healing the ever-loving shit out of the group. The mingled sensations of sugar and spice waft through the space, and skin dances with pins and needles and the touch of a warm breeze as wounds knit closed and deep sighs are finally taken.

“We should message the others,” Nott suggests, nodding at Jester.

Jester nods and grips her holy symbol.

“Hey Beau!” She chirps, letting the waves of her spell fan outwards. “We ran into the barghest, but we totally killed it! It was super scary but now we’re going to check out the cellar and we—”

“Ah. Too many, Jess,” Fjord says from above her, amusement playing on his voice. Jester snorts and sits up.

“That’s great,” Beau says back, her words carried on the buzzing waves of Jester’s spell. “Caleb and I just got out of the meeting. We’re gonna try and keep Müller distracted.”

Jester brightens.

“Beau says they’re keeping Müller busy,” she reports. “We should start exploring now.”

Nott wastes no time after the go-ahead, and wrenches the trapdoor open with the help of Caduceus. Jester had expected some kind of puff of dust or ash, but there’s nothing—this place has been accessed recently.

Nott zips ahead with little fanfare, and the remaining three share a brief glance before following.

The trapdoor opens into a small, rickety staircase, which in turn opens into a root cellar. It smells of decay and disuse, and shelves Jester presumes would have at one point been full of preserves and other food are barren. The most interesting feature in the room is an archway on the far wall, which brackets a dark hallway that stretches even farther down into the earth.

The archway is made of roughhewn stone and looks clumsily constructed. As the group draw closer, Jester sees strange writing in looping, almost elvish script, carved into the dark stone.

She can’t read it, and judging by the faces of her friends, they can’t either.

“I think Beau was right,” Caduceus says.

Nott startles slightly. “About what?”

“About our mystery person’s lack of formal training.”

He runs his hand over the doorway before continuing. “Do you remember Miss Reani? Her magic is perhaps a good comparison.”

“What, turning into animals and stuff?” Jester asks.

“Her kind of magic isn’t god-given or book-learned, it’s channelled from the energy of the nature around them. The ability to speak with animals and assume their forms… manipulate the elements...”

“Druids,” Jester breathes. “You think whoever did this was a druid?”

Caduceus nods. “Druids are not uncommon in small communities, especially, hmm…Nott—” he nods down at her “—you remember Nila?”

Jester doesn’t know the name, and a quick glance at Fjord confirms he doesn’t either. Nott, however, nods.

“Firbolg clans tend to keep lifestyles that benefit from druidic practices,” Caduceus continues. “Small communities with deep ties to nature or agriculture.”

Nott’s big eyes widen. “And this is a small community—a farming town—you think it fits the bill?”

“I do.”

Caduceus points up to the arched doorway with his staff, tracing a line of runic writing Jester can’t parse.

“I can’t read it,” Caduceus says. “But this is Druidic. It’s quite a secret language. Few outside of their order speak it.”

“So, a druid is the one doing all this…” Fjord says. “Starting a ghost story…”

“…controlling a barghest…” Jester adds.

“…giving Caleb those nightmares,” Nott

“I thought druids were supposed to be _nice_,” Fjord says miserably. “Reani was nice.”

Caduceus hums, a low rumbling sound. “Darkness can lurk in the hearts of anyone,” he says, “even those we least expect. Nature is as cruel and unforgiving as it is nurturing… its conduits are the same.”

Silence falls for just a moment. The ambience of the underground is stifling. “We need to keep looking,” Fjord reasons. “We need to figure out who this druid is—Why they’re doing this...”

They begin to walk down the tunnel, but

“Whoever this druid is, they’re likely trying to protect the town. Controlling the barghest has been their way of keeping Blumenthal safe.”

“From what?” Nott squawks.

“From outsiders,” Jester answers in a small voice. “Right? Travellers and adventurers and stuff.”

Father Alphonse’s words flash through her mind again.

“Talk about an insular community,” Fjord says. “We’re lucky we teleported in, or we probably would’ve been their next target.”

The thought is a grim one, and they walk in silence down the dirt hallway.

They’re almost at the end of it, with a small wooden door in sight, when Nott suddenly freezes.

It’s almost comical, the way the three of them crash into each other behind her in a little line, desperately trying to keep their balance. Nott doesn’t notice though. She has her face tilted slightly up, her eyes wide and anxious.

After a second, she speaks.

“Do you smell that?”

Her tone is hushed and strained.

“Smell what?” Jester asks quietly. 

Nott doesn’t reply, instead opting to dart forward to the door, easing it open with only a cursory glance for traps.

Her strangled cry is almost deafening in the silence, and Jester sees her clamp a hand over her mouth.

She dashes forward, catching the door before Nott lets it fall closed.

Against her better judgement, Jester lets the driftglobe hover into the centre of the room, casting eerie faux daylight across the horrific scene in front of them.

The hall opens into a wide, circular room. On the hard-packed dirt floor, a huge arcane circle unlike anything Jester has ever seen is carved into the earth. But that’s only the beginning.

The floor is caked in layers upon layers of old, tacky blood, and it reeks of death. Chains and twisted metal implements line the walls like awful, perverted artwork. The blood is splashed up over the walls, and a small worktable cluttered with moulding leather tomes and _knives_.

If Jester hadn’t seen as much blood as she had over the last year, she might have thrown up.

“Oh… Oh Gods…” Nott murmurs, and points a shaking claw to the far side of the room.

Jester hears Fjord and Caduceus gasp in unison behind her, but she can’t bring herself to make a sound—only stare.

A pile of humanoid skeletons is lain in a stack under the table, in such high quantity that they’re spilling out from under it. Like a child trying to hide candy under there bed, Jester thinks stupidly.

“What is this place?” Fjord asks in a weak voice.

“It’s awful,” Jester musters. “It’s… it’s like a torture chamber.”

She wonders if Fjord is remembering the Iron Shepherds, with their dank cells and sneering grins and too-tight shackles and hands that hurt. Because that’s what she’s thinking of.

She thinks he might be, because as Caduceus and Nott carefully fan out into the room, he gives her shoulder a quick squeeze in the doorway as he passes.

Jester swallows.

“What is the circle for?” She asks to no one in particular. She has watched Nott and Caleb work with arcane circles and things before, enough that she’s quite certain she’s never seen geometry like this in anything they’ve done.

She wasn’t even aware druids _did_ magic with circles.

Nott bends down, running shaking fingers above the gouged, blood-filled runes in the floor.

“It’s a binding circle,” she reports. “I-It’s used for binding summoned creatures. Sort of like what Caleb does with Frumpkin.”

Jester nods absently. She remembers watching him do it, and while she can now see that the shapes of the circle are similar, the geometry of the thing—and the runes within—are foreign to her.

“B-but it’s not right…” Nott says.

“The druid was using blood as a component, likely in the place of something else,” Caduceus wagers. “The ritual would have to be redone often. Blood is a difficult component to work with. It gets less potent with age, so this druid would have had to sacrifice living people on a regular basis.”

Jester is vaguely aware of Fjord making a gagging sound somewhere in the background.

Nott grits her teeth.

“…Using the barghest to keep people away, _sacrificing_ them as a way to keep the beast appeased and under their control…”

“Whoever this is… they’re at that meeting,” Jester whispers. “We have to go back… this… this is…”

Caduceus places a hand on her shoulder, and Jester’s eyes dart to his, searching and fearful.

“You’re right,” he says. “This is far more serious than I thought it would be. This is a perversion of nature’s will.”

“It’s _necromancy_,” Fjord says darkly, and when Jester meets his eyes she sees he’s staring sadly at a skull in his hand.

“And Beau and Caleb are right there with them,” Nott says.

The pause, letting the stench of old rot and congealed blood fester in their noses for just a second longer.

An then they run.

They break out back into the kitchen, hearts hammering in their throats. They’re almost out the door when—

“—er!”

Jester gasps, snapping to attention. Everyone else’s hands fly to their weapons.

“What was that?” Jester hisses.

“It came from upstairs,” Nott whispers. “Let’s flank it.”

Fjord and Nott fan out, Nott dropping low into the shadows in the hallway, out of sight, and Fjord skirting around to the living room. Jester dashes to hide in the front doorway with a line of sight to the stairs, while Caduceus recedes back behind a section of wall tall enough to hide him.

There are footsteps upstairs, uneven and shaky as whoever is moving around comes closer.

“—ester? Jester!?” The voice congeals into solid words, and Jester recognises it immediately.

“Wait!” Jester gasps. Her companions jump in their hiding places. “That’s Liesel!”

A small figure appears at the top of the stairs wearing a heavy work coat, pale frock, and work boots. Long blonde hair, stained white in the moonlight, spills over her shoulders. Big blue eyes meet Jester’s and widen.

“Liesel?!”

Liesel stumbles down the stairs, blonde hair twirling around behind her. She looks frazzled. “Jester!”

Jester scrambles forward and grabs the girl’s shoulders. “What are you doing out here?!”

_“Was?”_ Liesel looks up, confusion and a lack of comprehension dawning on her face.

_Oh. Shit. _

Jester swiftly casts Tongues on herself, her magic a warm caress on her own skin. She feels the spell settle, and then repeats herself.

“Liesel!” she gasps. “What are you doing out here! It could be dangerous!”

“Y—” Liesel takes a shuddering breath.

“It’s okay! Just breathe, okay?”

A small chirp cuts through a bit of the tension, and the group watch in shock as the small head of a familiar bird-cat pokes out from Liesel’s coat.

“Frumpkin?!” Nott squeaks.

Liesel’s eyes drift to Nott, widening upon seeing the undisguised goblin for the first time.

“Hey, Nott’s a friend, okay!” Jester says, as sweetly as possible. “Don’t worry!”

Nott, apparently unaware of Liesel’s eyes on her, has wandered forward to grab Frumpkin from Liesel’s jacket, and, apparently, pickpocket her.

“Hey!” Fjord snaps at her, but Nott looks unapologetic as she places Frumpkin onto her shoulder with one hand and pulls a dagger out of Liesel’s belt with the other.

Liesel pales.

“This is Caleb’s…” Nott reports, eyes wide. She turns to Liesel. “Where did you get this?”

Liesel squeaks under the scrutiny.

Jester adjusts her hold on the young girl’s slight frame, pulling at her hands for just a moment, and that’s when she sees it.

Her palms are positively _coated_ in soot.

The mild smell of soot and burning hangs around Liesel like a cloud—in an odd way, Jester realises, it’s almost reminiscent of the sensory effects of Caleb’s magic, though tangier, and not as much like the fires of a hearth as his.

Jester’s stomach plummets. “Liesel… what happened to—”

“Y–Your friends… Beau and C–Ca—” she breaks off into a short fit of coughs. Caduceus is by her side almost instantly, rubbing small, steadying circles on her back as she hacks soot-darkened spit onto the dirt.

“Beau and Caleb?” Jester finishes Liesel’s sentence for her. At the mention of Caleb, Jester feels Nott tense behind her. “What about them?”

Liesel looks up at her, eyes wide and bloodshot. Tears brim in them, threatening to spill over onto her soot-smeared cheeks.

“They’re in tr–trouble,” she says, words clumsy and tumbling. “They sent me t–to f—”

She breaks into coughing again, but waves Caduceus off when he moves to help. With a sharp inhale she pulls her gaze back to Jester and pushes forward.

“They sent me to find you,” she says, and the tears are falling now. Jester squeezes her hands.

“She says they’re in trouble and she was sent to find us,” Jester reports, turning around to see Fjord and Nott looking at her with expressions of open concern.

“Beau and Caleb?” Fjord asks. Jester nods furiously.

Liesel speaks up again, voice strained as she babbles tearfully. “I came as fast and I c–could and—and I think they’re h–hurt and—”

She makes a little choking sound and begins to cough again, wet and hacking and awful.

“Okay, that’s enough now,” Caduceus says softly. From where he sits crouched next to Liesel, Jester watches him hold his palm flat against her back and whisper a small prayer to the Wildmother. A restoration spell.

Warm, muted light radiates from his hand for just a moment, briefly replacing the smell of soot in the air around Liesel with the much nicer scent of cloves and earth. A second later, Liesel takes a giant, heaving, shuddering breath.

“That’s it,” Caduceus soothes, continuing to rub circles into the young girl’s back as she inhales and exhales slowly. “Smoke inhalation can be rough.”

Jester’s skin crawls, and she meets Fjord’s stare with equally wide eyes.

“Smoke inhalation?” she repeats. “What do you mean…?”

A warm wind sweeps through the fields, sending the blooms bobbing like tiny dancers in the darkness. It whips through the bones of the house, curling around them in the destroyed front hallway. The wind catches Jester’s hair in its caress, pulling it back from her grime-streaked face like warm hands. That’s the odd thing about it; it’s warm—hot, even—too warm for the time of year.

Then the scent of ash fills Jester’s nose.

The night in the north has been a dark affair so far, even as they sit on the precipice of springtime. Now, however, it is alight in reds and oranges and hot whites. As four pairs of eyes look up to the horizon, they see Blumenthal illuminated, fire casting an ember-glow against the dark sky.

They don’t say anything as they start running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it still a cliff hanger if you know exactly who set the fire?
> 
> I know Programmed Illusion isn’t a Druid spell, but also it’s my fic I get to choose which rules to blatantly ignore. 
> 
> This was supposed to be the second to last chapter but there’s going to be at least two more and maybe an epilogue. This got… entirely out of hand. Next one will hopefully be up sooner! See you all then!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @fizzityuck, twitter @claregormy, or wherever good books are sold.


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